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Reduce Unsolicited US Mail & Phone Calls

1. Tell major tele-marketers not to call you: enter as many numbers as you have at http://donotcall.gov or http://www.ftc.gov/donotcall
Or call 1-888-382-1222 (TTY 1-866-290-4236), from each number you want to register.
Registration is free & lasts until number is disconnected or 5 years, whichever comes sooner. Re-register if your phone service is disconnected for any reason. Include your cell number, which telemarketers can otherwise call in some situations.

2. Tell all credit bureaus not to release your record for unsolicited credit card offers (pre-screened mailing lists). 888-567-8688 (888-5OPTOUT) or www.optoutprescreen.com. They will ask for your phone number, name, and social security number. You can do this for 5 years or permanently. You can also get a free copy of your credit report: Info. (That info site also recommends using credit cards, rather than debit cards on the internet, because you have more legal rights & lower loss limits for credit than debit cards. On the other hand credit cards generally report your monthly spending to credit bureaus, while debit cards do not. Certainly check any new internet seller with the Better Business Bureau.)

3. Tell major direct-mailers not to send mail. Mailed requests must be signed.
(Registration is free by mail, or $5 at http://www.dmaconsumers.org/consumerassistance.html or http://www.the-dma.org/ ).
Registration lasts 5 years.

Mail Preference Service
Direct Marketing Association
PO Box 643
Carmel NY 10512

The above first three steps are the most important. The steps below are effective within their own specific scope.

* Tell Frontier phone company (800-921-8101) to exclude your number when they sell computer lists of numbers. This is free, while taking your number out of the printed phone book costs money.

* You can tell school administrators every August or September not to give your middle & high school children's names, addresses & phones to military recruiters, who are very persistent callers. You can just send a note to the principal, or use the "Privacy Act" form in the Student/Parent Handbook (beginning-of-year forms) at http://boe.jeff.k12.wv.us More information is at http://www.leavemychildalone.org Students 18 or older can do this themselves. The latter site also tells you how to opt out of another recruiters' database collected from other sources than schools. (Of course your children can still contact any recruiter; this just stops recruiters from calling first.) Public & private schools must give your children's contact info to recruiters unless you say no (rules are at NCLB 9528 definitions are at NCLB9101(26) ). Do this when children are young; if recruiters get info even once, they can save it until the children are old enough to enlist. Page 2 of the Parent/Student handbook of Jefferson County Schools has similar information on opting out, and they say to do this within 10 days. You can actually opt out any time, and no more info will be given to recruiters for the rest of that school year, though you'll need to renew each school year. They first give the file to recruiters around the end of October. If you want to avoid recruiters' calls, send a note or the form to the principal now. Also use http://www.leavemychildalone.org to get your information out of other defense department files.

* The U. S. Postal Service maintains a list of people who do not want sexually oriented advertising coming to their home, and provides the list to companies which mail such promotions. Take Form 1500 to your local Post Office to stop all sexually oriented mail, or mail from a particular company.

* Report harassing callers to 911 and the phone company.

* Tell each unsolicited caller to remove you from their list.

* Tell each repeat mailer (like catalogs) to remove you from their list.

* Tell each company that sends you a privacy statement that you want to opt out of information sharing.

* Tell debt collectors not to contact you (FTC complaints & procedures, private advice)

Common Advice on ID Theft

If you lose your wallet or cards, call credit bureaus first to put a fraud alert, so people don't give new credit to imposters in your name. This & other good advice is all over the web, if you search for "Anonymous Attorney's Advice" Check a review of the advice at http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/credit.htm More thorough advice is at http://www.pirg.org/consumer/credit/theft.htm

1.) Equifax: 1-800-525-6285

2.) Experian (formerly TRW): 1-888-397-3742

3.) Trans Union: 1-800-680-7289

4.) Federal Trade Commission: 1-877-ID-THEFT (438-4338) or http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft/

People Find Where You Live, from Your Phone Number

Google and other websites give out your address to anyone who has your phone number. They will stop if you ask them, at: http://www.google.com/help/pbremoval.html

Privacy on Yahoo

A good explanation is at http://jondreyer.org/yahoospam.html

There are at least two privacy issues on Yahoo:

- Mail preferences under http://subscribe.yahoo.com/showaccount and

- Web beacons under http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/beacons/details.html If you opt out of web beacons, they will not send info about you to other websites, but those other websites will still tell Yahoo that you visited them.

Privacy on Search Engines

Quotes from "Google Records Subpoena Raises Privacy Fears," by Maria Godoy, 1/20/06

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5165533

...Below are excerpts from search engine's privacy policies regarding the disclosure of information for legal purposes:

Google: "Google does comply with valid legal process, such as search warrants, court orders, or subpoenas seeking personal information. These same processes apply to all law-abiding companies. As has always been the case, the primary protections you have against intrusions by the government are the laws that apply to where you live."

Yahoo: "We respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, or to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims; We believe it is necessary to share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of Yahoo!'s terms of use, or as otherwise required by law."

MSN: "We may access and/or disclose your personal information if we believe such action is necessary to: (a) comply with the law or legal process served on Microsoft; (b) protect and defend the rights or property of Microsoft (including the enforcement of our agreements); or (c) act in urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of Microsoft services or members of the public."

AOL: "The contents of your online communications, as well as other information about you as an AOL Network user, may be accessed and disclosed in response to legal process (for example, a court order, search warrant or subpoena); in other circumstances in which AOL believes the AOL Network is being used in the commission of a crime; when we have a good faith belief that there is an emergency that poses a threat to the safety of you or another person; or when necessary either to protect the rights or property of AOL, the AOL Network or its affiliated providers, or for us to render the service you have requested."

...Google, Microsoft's MSN, Yahoo and AOL received subpoenas for a random sampling of millions of Internet addresses cataloged in their databases, as well as for records for potentially billions of searches made over a one-week period. Only Google refused to comply. The Justice Department wants to use the data to support its argument that Web-filtering software doesn't work.

"All the search engines have created a honey pot of information about people and what they search for," says Kurt Opsahl, a staff attorney for the group. "It's a window into their personalities -- what they want, what they dream about. This information gets stored, and that becomes very tempting."

...At a basic level, search engines retain a record of the Web sites users visit and the search terms they use. "Cookies" -- text files that are embedded in a user's hard drive by a Web page server -- help search engines keep a record of their customers' Web habits to personalize their searches and to deliver targeted advertising. Yahoo's cookie expires in June 2006. The cookie used by Google lasts until 2036.

Search engines that offer e-mail services -- such as Yahoo Mail or Google's Gmail -- retain whatever personal information users are required to enter when opening an e-mail account, Sullivan notes. The same holds true for anyone who signs in when using a personalized homepage from Google or Yahoo. Whatever information you provide when signing in could be linked to your search history.

And customers who buy services from a search engine might also be leaving their credit card information behind. "Technically, they can use that to find out who you are," Sullivan says.

Technology to help Web users protect their privacy is available. Software such as Tor and Anonymizer hides a user's IP address (the string of numbers that identifies a user's computer) from search engines by routing search requests through a maze of servers.

Common Advice on ID Theft

1.) Equifax: 1-800-525-6285

2.) Experian (formerly TRW): 1-888-397-3742

3.) Trans Union: 1-800-680-7289

4.) Social Security Administration (fraud line): 1-800-269-0271