advertisement
If you want to protect yourself from marketing invasions, there are other actions you can take as well:
Opt out. You can cut down on the credit card offers clogging your mailbox by registering with the opt-out service run by the major credit bureaus. Visit OptOutPrescreen.com or call 1-888-5-OPT-OUT (1-888-567-8688); be prepared to key in your Social Security number and date of birth. You'll have the option of removing your name either for five years or permanently from pre-screened marketing lists sold to credit card companies and insurers.
You can also prevent financial institutions and other companies from sharing or selling information about you. Look for the privacy notices that should come with your statements at least once a year, and follow their instructions. You should have to opt out only once with each institution.
Get off junk-mail lists. The Direct Marketing Association will help you scrub your name and address from its members' mailing list. This won't eliminate junk mail, because many direct mailers aren't association members, but you should see a reduction. The association now charges $1 for the service, whether you register by mail or online. For details, check out its Web site.
More from MSN Money
Can the catalogs. We're heading into the extended holiday season, which means retailers will be carpet-bombing us with catalogs. Save a tree and your sanity by calling a halt. You've got several options:
- Call each retailer's toll-free number and request to be taken off its list. It's helpful to have the customer number from your mailing label.
- Tear off the page with the mailing label and mail it to the retailer with a request to be removed from its mailing list.
- Use a service such as StopTheJunkMail.com, which does the heavy lifting for you. I started using this service last year, which for $19.95 annually will help you get off catalog mailing lists, and have been pleased with the results. You set up an account and enter the relevant information from each catalog as it arrives; the service takes care of the rest.
Get picky about sharing your information. Every time you order something online, check the site's privacy policy. Avoid sites that don't let you opt out of advertising or arrangements to share or sell your information with others. Also, uncheck any boxes that allow the retailer to spam you or share your data. Be wary about signing up for freebies, sweepstakes or contests, online or off, because many are simply ploys to collect contact information for marketing purposes.
Freeze your credit. This is a pretty drastic step and probably best reserved for identity-theft victims and those at high risk of identity theft. (See "Lock away your credit from ID thieves" for details.) But freezing your credit also has the side effect of reducing marketing offers from lenders, insurers and others, since typically they can't peruse your credit.
So far, 39 states and the District of Columbia allow residents to lock up access to their credit reports and credit scores, although in some states the option is limited to ID-theft victims only. For a list of states and their requirements, visit the Consumers Union site, FinancialPrivacyNow.org.
Recently, TransUnion announced a service that would allow anyone in the country to freeze his or her own report at the credit bureau for $10, starting in October. Subscribers to TransUnion's TrueCredit.com monitoring service for $14.95 a month already have this ability to lock and unlock their credit. The other two credit bureaus, Experian and Equifax, are likely to follow soon with a similar nationwide freeze option.
Columns by Liz Pulliam Weston, the Web's most-read personal finance writer and winner of the 2007 Clarion Award for online journalism, appear every Monday and Thursday, exclusively on MSN Money. She also answers reader questions on the Your Money message board.
Published Oct. 23, 2007
< previous | 1 | 2 |
Rate this Article
High