Do You Really Hate Junk Mail

Whether you want it or not, every day you receive huge junk mail. It's annoying and pestering but the story does not end there. A big risk of identity theft is lurking behind every single piece of junk mail. It's a question of protecting your financial life. Here is how you can control the flow of incoming junk mail - 1. Get your phone number and address unlisted. Many companies start with local phone book and they keep on sending letters to generate leads. You may also receive unsolicited phone calls. You can avoid all this trouble by getting your phone unlisted. There is a small fee for getting your phone unlisted but the money is worth spending. 2. Send such junk mail back - If you receive letters with a postage paid return envelope, you can write to the sender a letter requesting the removal of your name from their mailing list. Put this letter in the postage paid envelope and send it back. The mass mailing company will be required to pay for receiving your envelope. This will prevent them from mailing you further. 3. Think before you fill in warranty cards - This is a smart trick of many companies. Under this pretext, they can get your full details without much effort. They may sell these details to their partner companies. If you read the columns on such cards, most of the information is unnecessary. The number of children at your home or your annual income has nothing to do with the warranty. This all information determines the method to target you for selling more and more products. Most of the products will be covered with a limited warranty even though you have not sent back the warranty card. The only missing advantage is replacement of the product when it is recalled. If you really want to register yourself for a possible recall, just fill the recall section of the warranty card with the serial number of product, your name and address and return leaving the other fields blank. 4. Opting out of offers which are pre-approved - Pre-approved offers carry the biggest risk to your identity. Such letters keep on coming and you may throw them away without even destroying. They carry important information about you and if it goes in the hands of identity thieves, it will certainly damage your financial life. There is one website www.optoutprescreen.com to prevent in-coming pre-approved offers. You can visit the website and enter your information. You can stop the in-coming pre-approved offers for a period of five years or permanently. Even if you select any of these options, you can still get the opportunity to change your decision anytime afterwords. By opting out of pre-approved offers you may sometimes miss important opportunities like exclusive rates of interest which are generally offered to the pre-approved customers. If you don't want to lose such opportunities, fine. Then you should check each and every letter you receive and shred it before throwing it in the garbage. 5. Register with the national do-not-call registry service - The service is available in order to avoid phone calls with unwanted offers. Identity thieves may call you posing themselves as bank representatives or credit card company representatives. You can avoid the risk by registering with this service. If you receive any call thereafter, it is an illegitimate call and there is no need to give any information to the caller. Normally you should never give your personal information on phones to anybody because no bank or financial institution will call you to verify your details. Your effort to avoid junk mail and junk phone calls not only increases your comforts but it is also an important step to protect your identity. You get restless and annoyed when you realize that someone has accessed and misused your personal details. The financial pain which comes thereafter is unbearable. But have you ever thought about the root to such problems? It may be the junk mail that you receive. How to avoid pestering junk mail? Chintamani Abhyankar suggests useful strategies.