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Reduce Unsolicited US Mail & Phone Calls
People Find Where You Live, from Your Phone Number
Reduce Unsolicited
Most steps are free.
1.
Tell major tele-marketers not to call you : enter as many
phone numbers as you have at donotcall.gov or 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. File complaints at same website.
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 annualcreditreport.com and of CoreLogic's records of property ownership and mortgages. Besides opting out, see below for establishing a "fraud alert" (free) or "freezing" your credit reports (costs money).
3. Tell major direct-mailers
not to send mail. http://dmachoice.org Registration lasts 5 years.
The above first three steps are the most important. The steps below
are effective within their own specific scope.
* 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)
*When you move, give the Postal Service a
"Temporary change of address" form for 11½ months, instead of
a permanent change, if you want to keep USPS from giving your new address to
mailers who pay for it. "Address corrections and notices are not provided
for customers who file a temporary change of address or for individuals at a
business address." according to the USPS Domestic Mail Manual, section
507, "Mailer Services" subsection 3.1.2 http://pe.usps.gov/archive/html/dmmarchive0106/507.htm#wp1113100
Further discussion at ecofuture.org/jm/usps_coa.html and knowmore.org/wiki/index.php?title=Junk_Mail:_Unsolicited_Advertising_that_Pollutes_Our_Planet_and_Invades_Our_Privacy
* 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.
* "Political Do Not Contact Registry"
has advice on minimizing politicians' calls http://www.stoppoliticalcalls.org
* 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
also ask the phone company to put a "
Common
Advice on ID Theft
Most
common types of ID theft in your zip code
Annual Free Credit Report: You can get a free copy of your credit report at annualcreditreport.com online instantly or mailed to your home address or PO Box, and of CoreLogic's records of property ownership and mortgages.
If they refuse an online copy (because their erroneous records fail to match
the information you enter), you probably need an instant copy to check what's
wrong, and you may be able to buy one by subscribing at a low teaser rate from
TransUnion, Equifax or Experian directly, and then cancel the higher-priced
renewal. Using your credit card to pay the teaser rate identifies you pretty
well, so you can see the report even if not all information matches. Often
these teaser rates are built on selling you your credit score and/or credit
monitoring. The credit score is not the same as a bank or insurance company
uses to rate you, so is only mildly helpful. Their analysis of how to improve your
score varies dramatically across sites, even on the same day, so may also be
unhelpful.
Credit Freeze
If you lose your wallet or someone gets your financial information, put a freeze on your credit reports, so no one (except existing creditors, governments, and credit monitoring companies) can see the reports until you lift the freeze. Therefore no one (including you) can get a new loan based on your credit. It generally costs $5-10 per credit bureau to start & stop. Price depends on your state law, and is given in the following article:
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Banking/FinancialPrivacy/LockAwayYourCreditFromIDThieves.aspx
http://www.experian.com/consumer/security_freeze.html
https://help.equifax.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/158/noIntercept/1/kw/freeze
http://www.transunion.com/corporate/personal/fraudIdentityTheft/fraudPrevention/securityFreeze.page
If you lose a credit, debit, or ATM card, call the card company. They will freeze the card and give you a new number, or just freeze it for a few days if you think you may find the card.
A debit card does not have the same legal protections as a credit card, so use a credit card on the internet (and check internet sellers with the Better Business Bureau). Also use a credit card where it has insurance benefits (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damage_waiver ). However credit cards report the monthly amount of your spending to the credit bureaus each month, while a debit card keeps that private, so if you want your spending levels to be private, use a debit card with businesses you know.
Fraud Alert
Different from a freeze is a fraud alert, which tells lenders to take extra steps to verify an applicant's identity. That may not work as well as a freeze (see the links above), but a fraud alert is free.
Asking one credit bureau for a fraud alert is supposed to be enough.
They will tell the other two, who will send you confirmation letters:
1.) Equifax:
2.) Experian (formerly TRW):
3.)
4.) Federal Trade Commission:
1-877-ID-THEFT (438-4338) or http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft/
There
are two types of fraud alerts: an initial alert, and an extended
alert.
If you have been a victim of identity theft, you can also get a free Credit Freeze, see above. 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
Free
credit monitoring (ad-supported Karma, Sesame)
Military
Recruiters
* 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.
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
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."
...Google, Microsoft's
"All the search engines have created a honey pot of information about
people and what they search for," says
...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,
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,"
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.