Bro, Do You Even Opt Out?

I sent a polite but firm email to the Anchorage Daily News today about the amount of junk mail, advertisements, special sections and mailbox clogging materials I receive from them on an almost daily basis.  While I can appreciate a certain amount of advertising on a limited basis, having all my other mail folded and otherwise mangled because my box is filled with their crap is annoying at the very least.  I would complain to the United States Postal Service but I know that it would fall on deaf ears.  They are suckling on the Government teat (something they deny constantly but do anyway) and therefore have no real public accountability (i.e. untouchable).

Since I don't want to have to do such a thing again, I went to the Federal Trade Commission's site to see what legal recourse I might have in ending  what appears to be a mail box spam "bag of holding" going on at my residence.  While you might have heard of the, Do Not Call list, there is something similar in vein for marketing materials in a hard copy form.

Voila!  I found the Opt Out PreScreen function from the major credit reporting agencies.  More info here:  http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0262-stopping-unsolicited-mail-phone-calls-and-emailand the direct site here: https://www.optoutprescreen.com/?rf=tand some Wikipedia action here as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optoutprescreen.com

For those of you at home who aren't quite sure how the whole credit rating thing involves other companies getting your information, this is it in a nutshell:  There are several major credit rating companies, such as Equifax, who gather all the dirt on you regarding your age, sex, social security number, address, marriage, accounts, balances, etc. etc. to be able to determine how capable you are of paying back money lent on credit.  Keep in mind these are private companies that are tracking you probably far better than the NSA does (with exception of those nasty things you do on Facebook - shame on you!).  And according to their proprietary formulas they assign you a number which is your credit score (what better way to dehumanize you, assign you a number).

With me so far?  Good.  Well, your information isn't exactly private.  Anyone with access to a system that can pull a credit score (it's far more people than you would ever believe) can get your information and start marketing to you.  This is why you'll see stuff come to your current address with your maiden name even though you might have been married for years.  It's also the reason credit card companies are willing to take a risk on you because it's not really a risk at all - ha-ha, they already know!  Scared yet?  Allow me to quote some Alexander Pope, because it's relevant:

A little learning is a dang'rous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring

In today's world you'd better be thirsty.  That sounds like a perfect sentence to end a Blog entry but I'm wrong about that since there's still more (But wait, there's more!).

To really wrap this up, I went to the Opt Out site and signed up for a 5 year opt out.  I would have done the permanent, we never contact you again opt out, but you have to mail things and it's far past 5 on school night and I'd rather just not deal with that, forget out it or procrastinate about it.

If you hate spam like I do, check it out yourself, do the research since it is asking you for lot of personal details you should never give to anyone on the internet without looking both ways and then go ahead.  If it passes your test, then go ahead and do it.