Weekend Edition: Cut Down On Junk Mail
Wish you would stop getting junk mail from credit card issuers and insurors? At OptOutPrescreen.com you can submit your name and be removed from the lists that Equifax, Experian, Innovis, and TransUnion sell. You can remove your name for five years at the website — if you want to make it permanent you need to follow up with a letter they provide.
It may give you pause to supply the site with your social security number — I certainly stopped and did some research. It’s not a phishing scam. See this FTC page and this commentary by an InfoWorld columnist.
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July 11th, 2006 at 7:53 am
I have a family member who works for Experian, and he claims this is a hoax. (As Experian has never heard of these people.)
He also states the use of a Social Security Number cannot be used to supress such marketing (as it is illegal)
July 11th, 2006 at 9:54 am
I’m confident it’s legit. I don’t believe it’s a company, but a site operated by TransUnion to fulfill requirements under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
In addition to the link from the Federal Trade Commission, here is a link to TransUnion’s site where they tell readers that OptOutPreScreen is the way to be deleted from unsolicited “firm offer” mailings.
The online research I did found many people who had the same questions about its legitimacy and were ultimately satisfied, and none who declared it to be a phishing scam.
The ability to opt out of the deluge of offers is actually mandated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act — here’s a press release from the FTC describing the opt-out requirement. And the FTC support for OptOutPre Screen.com is pretty substantial if you visit the link in the initial post.
So I can understand why someone in the credit reporting industry wouldn’t have heard of this — it’s not something they want to promote, after all — but I can’t find anything that even makes me suspicious.