{"id":358,"date":"2014-06-01T14:52:46","date_gmt":"2014-06-01T21:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eriknovales.com\/blog\/?p=358"},"modified":"2014-06-01T14:52:46","modified_gmt":"2014-06-01T21:52:46","slug":"operation-stop-junk-mail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eriknovales.com\/?p=358","title":{"rendered":"Operation Stop Junk Mail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;m going to try to do everything I can to stop junk mail from being sent to me, and document everything that I&#8217;ve done in the hopes that it gives other people some ideas on how to stem the tide of garbage hitting their mailbox.<\/p>\n<p>The first step on this journey is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.consumer.ftc.gov\/articles\/0262-stopping-unsolicited-mail-phone-calls-and-email\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">FTC&#8217;s &#8220;Stopping Unsolicited Mail, Phone Calls, and Email&#8221; page<\/a>. Here you will find:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.optoutprescreen.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">optoutprescreen.com<\/a>, 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 &#8212; 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.<\/li>\n<li>The government&#8217;s &#8220;do not call&#8221; registry, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.donotcall.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">www.donotcall.gov<\/a>. While this doesn&#8217;t actually address junk mail, it&#8217;s such a basic quality-of-life improvement that it&#8217;s worth including anyway.<\/li>\n<li>The Direct Marketing Association&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dmachoice.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">&#8220;Mail Preference Service&#8221; site, www.dmachoice.org<\/a>. This lets you opt out of several categories of junk mail. They also have an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ims-dm.com\/cgi\/optoutemps.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">&#8220;e-mail preference service&#8221;<\/a> which alleges to reduce unsolicited commercial e-mail.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Beyond that, now you&#8217;ll need to start on some other companies with whom you probably do business, and sell your name and address to &#8220;marketing partners.&#8221; The primary ones that I&#8217;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 &#8220;opt-out&#8221; switches tend to be hidden in each company&#8217;s &#8220;Privacy Policy&#8221; section of their site &#8212; if you can&#8217;t find any way to opt out of slimy sleazy marketing in the normal account settings, check their privacy policy. (I&#8217;m guessing that there&#8217;s a legal reason for this, but I haven&#8217;t dug into the specifics.)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bankofamerica.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bank of America<\/a> hides <a href=\"https:\/\/secure.bankofamerica.com\/customer\/public\/privacy.go\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the link to opt-out<\/a> on their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bankofamerica.com\/privacy\/overview.go?request_locale=en-us\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">privacy policy page<\/a>, but the process is pretty straightforward once you find it.<\/li>\n<li>For <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chase.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chase<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/chaseonline.chase.com\/public\/privacy\/privacyfilter.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">link to opt-out<\/a> is on their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chase.com\/resources\/consumer-privacy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">privacy policy page<\/a>, but it&#8217;s also accessible from your account screen.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.discovercard.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Discover<\/a> seems to be a bunch of slime that don&#8217;t provide any way to restrict information sharing online. I&#8217;m contacting them to find out how to stop their junk mail.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.united.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">United Airlines<\/a> has &#8220;Privacy&#8221; links for address and phone information in your account profile information. It&#8217;s pretty straightforward to set this up.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.southwest.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Southwest Airlines<\/a> makes you call their frequent flier customer service line (214-932-0333) in order to stop the direct mail spam, per <a href=\"http:\/\/www.southwest.com\/html\/about-southwest\/terms-and-conditions\/privacy-policy-pol.html?int=GFOOTER-BOTTOM-PRIVACY-POLICY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">their privacy policy<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aa.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">American Airlines<\/a> 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aa.com\/i18n\/footer\/privacyPolicy.jsp?anchorEvent=false&amp;from=footer#10\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">privacy policy page<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.delta.com\/\">Delta Airlines<\/a> is a mix of slimy and helpful. The links shown in their privacy policy regarding opt-out of promotional mail are useless &#8212; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.delta.com\/content\/www\/en_US\/skymiles\/earn-miles\/earn-miles-with-partners.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">one of them doesn&#8217;t show anything useful at all<\/a>, and the other just says, &#8220;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.&#8221; but doesn&#8217;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 <a href=\"http:\/\/metrics.delta.com\/optout.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">delta.com<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/deltaairlines.tt.omtrdc.net\/optout\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">targeting on delta.com<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.networkadvertising.org\/managing\/opt_out.asp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Network Advertising Initiative<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/settings\/ads\/onweb\/?hl=en&amp;hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Google&#8217;s ad networks<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/tools.google.com\/dlpage\/gaoptout\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Google Analytics<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adobe.com\/privacy\/opt-out.html#4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Adobe Site Services<\/a>, and a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutads.info\/choices\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">aboutads.info<\/a>, which seems to be some sort of industry-run page for opt-out).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;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!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-operation-stop-junk-mail"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriknovales.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriknovales.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriknovales.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriknovales.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriknovales.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/eriknovales.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriknovales.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriknovales.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriknovales.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}