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I entered a popular radio station's contest 20+ years ago online and purposely used a deviation of my name, one time and one time only. To this day, after 4 moves and address changes, I still get the occasional piece of junk mail in that name at my current address, AND get spam with that name in my email spam box. I have never used that name online, yet "they" know .......Big Brother knows all. So I know where that name originally entered the "system" and who sold/marketed it.
I will still receive the occasional piece of mail for my daughter at my address in her maiden name. She has been using her married name for 15 years, and has never lived at my current address or any of my last 4 addresses.
Yeah, in a few cases I can tell who distributed my info based on an individual mailer’s typo that later grew into multiple typoed mailers.
Part of it is perception: the first class mail has decreased markedly since most people started using computers, so the junk mail makes up a larger proportion of the total mail you receive. I think it's the only thing that keeps the Post Office in business.
Hmmm, that does apply to me about perception. I remember subscribing to print magazines whose contents had more...content...than ads or referrals to online articles. Duh, if I paid for a print mag I don’t want to be sent to a computer,
Number of junk mail letters delivered each year in the U.S. 104,700,000,000
Tons of paper used for sending junk mail 6,500,000 tons (That's 13-billion pounds)
I bet you thought with the death of newspapers and the use of plastic shopping bags and the digital storage and transmission of documents, we must be cutting down on our use of paper?
Percent increase in paper use today than 40 years ago 400 %
Number of times the average document is copied 10 times
Percent of office paper printed that ends up in the trash by the end of day 45 %
If you want the junk mail to stop, permanently forward your mail to a PO box.... After a year, the forwarding order will expire and the mail you care about will magically start appearing in your mailbox and you can cancel the PO box....If you move, you want to adopt that same strategy. Permanently forward all your mail to a PO box.
This will not help anything.
The fallacy here is using a permanent forwarding. To reduce (hard to stop) BBM (bulk business mail), never put in a permanent forwarding. If you do, everybody gets notified! Just because you cancel the PO box after a year, when the forwarding ends, does not mean everybody won't get notified once again; they will.
Instead, use a temporary forwarding. This is what snowbirds and RVers use. Nobody gets notified of anything, but your first class mail gets forwarded to you. You can choose any amount of time up to a year. If no further instructions are given, the mail will then be returned as "Undeliverable as Addressed". Just as it would be after a year with a permanent forwarding, except nobody gets notified of the new address. You will have plenty of time during that year to change your own addresses.
Clark Howard has an excellent suggestion for those who dislike credit card and loan applications in the mail. It's called a security freeze on all 3 credit bureaus. You get a PIN for each one, so you can lift the freeze whenever you wish (say, if applying for credit). I have done this, and it works!
You will still get BBM no matter what you do; you can only reduce it. If you absolutely want to get rid of it once and for all, you can rent a Florida mail service account. "Mail Service" is the word here. They will forward your mail anywhere you wish, or you can view it online, and you can have them discard all mail from bulk advertisers. I have also done this! I haven't looked at any junk mail in 5 years!
There are some disadvantages to living without ANY mail service at all---but not getting junk mail makes it all worthwhile. Same with no phones (just used for travel). Email does all....
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