I am sick and tired of receiving junk mail. It wastes my time, it wastes resources, and it generally has no redeeming value whatsoever. Even worse, I feel that for some classes of junk mail (stupid stuff like balance transfer checks, which I will never ever use), I need to take special care to shred it to avoid identity theft or scammery. So, I’m going to try to do everything I can to stop junk mail from being sent to me, and document everything that I’ve done in the hopes that it gives other people some ideas on how to stem the tide of garbage hitting their mailbox.
The first step on this journey is the FTC’s “Stopping Unsolicited Mail, Phone Calls, and Email” page. Here you will find:
- optoutprescreen.com, which is a site created by four major U.S. credit reporting companies to allow you to opt out of pre-screened credit card offers. You can opt out for a period of five years electronically — to opt out permanently, you need to mail in a signed form (which is a ridiculously weaselly requirement that is just trying to raise the pain threshold for truly opting out). Considering how much junk mail I get that consists of credit card offers, this seems like a great place to start. Note that unlike USPS mail forwarding, every individual in the household will need to opt out.
- The government’s “do not call” registry, www.donotcall.gov. While this doesn’t actually address junk mail, it’s such a basic quality-of-life improvement that it’s worth including anyway.
- The Direct Marketing Association’s “Mail Preference Service” site, www.dmachoice.org. This lets you opt out of several categories of junk mail. They also have an “e-mail preference service” which alleges to reduce unsolicited commercial e-mail.
Beyond that, now you’ll need to start on some other companies with whom you probably do business, and sell your name and address to “marketing partners.” The primary ones that I’m focusing on are banks, credit card companies, and airlines, since those seem to constitute most of the garbage offers I get in the mail. The general rule of thumb is that the “opt-out” switches tend to be hidden in each company’s “Privacy Policy” section of their site — if you can’t find any way to opt out of slimy sleazy marketing in the normal account settings, check their privacy policy. (I’m guessing that there’s a legal reason for this, but I haven’t dug into the specifics.)
- Bank of America hides the link to opt-out on their privacy policy page, but the process is pretty straightforward once you find it.
- For Chase, the link to opt-out is on their privacy policy page, but it’s also accessible from your account screen.
- Discover seems to be a bunch of slime that don’t provide any way to restrict information sharing online. I’m contacting them to find out how to stop their junk mail.
- United Airlines has “Privacy” links for address and phone information in your account profile information. It’s pretty straightforward to set this up.
- Southwest Airlines makes you call their frequent flier customer service line (214-932-0333) in order to stop the direct mail spam, per their privacy policy.
- American Airlines requires you to e-mail privacy@aa.com to opt-out of marketing mail and sharing of information with third parties. This information can be found on their privacy policy page.
- Delta Airlines is a mix of slimy and helpful. The links shown in their privacy policy regarding opt-out of promotional mail are useless — one of them doesn’t show anything useful at all, and the other just says, “Of course, if you do not want to receive a promotional mailing from one of these partners, you can always opt-out via e-mail or by calling the SkyMiles Service Center at 800-323-2323.” but doesn’t provide an e-mail address to use. Their site does provide a lot of links for opting out of ad targeting, though. (analytics and usage on delta.com, targeting on delta.com, Network Advertising Initiative, Google’s ad networks, Google Analytics, Adobe Site Services, and a link to aboutads.info, which seems to be some sort of industry-run page for opt-out).
I’m going to start with these and see how it goes. Hopefully this will eradicate a significant amount of hassle and wasted time and resources!