In this guide I outline the most impactful actions you can take toward privacy and reducing physical junk mail. We only get one life, and one planet. After a few weeks of getting zero junk mail or calls, and being at a significantly better posture for identity theft, these steps are worth it. Not a lot of this can be automated, unfortunately. Feel free to use a burner email address, and assume these parties are operating unethically.
Contributions are welcome, please feel free to submit a pull request or email the author cwm - at - cwmoriarty.com
Opt out for Junk Mail/unsolicited calls
- Enroll any and all phone numbers
- Register and login to the site,
- Pay $5 fee for 10-year registration period.
- You can also add email addresses to their email opt-out list.
- Five year opt-out via web, or permanent via mailer.
- Sign up for incogni at a 50% discount, at day 28 cancel and ask for a refund.
- Onerep are also worth trying. Use the Free tier.
- Kanary have a free 14 day trial, worth trying. Seems less broad and accurate (fewer checks, some false positives on name matches) than Incogni. YMMV.
Keep all of your junk mail in a pile for 1 month. Reach out to each one of the sources and directly ask them to remove your address and any customer data they have about you.
Note: Anything mailed PRESORTED cannot be rejected, otherwise just write REFUSED on the unopened mail and leave it for the postal worker to take back.
- Search https://www.catalogchoice.org/accounts/2474926/catalog_choices
- Search https://simpleoptout.com/
- Use USPS’s Informed Delivery to get daily emails with scanned copies of your incoming mail. I use this instead of the physical artifact to save time https://www.usps.com/manage/informed-delivery.htm
- Visit the URL, find the contact form or email address, send a message like:
My name is XXXX XXXX, my mailing address is YYYY and my phone number is 000-000-0000.
I am writing to request that you permanently opt me out and remove my personal information from any sales or rentals.
This includes my name, address, phone number (provided above), and any other data you may have collected about me.
I have the right to control my personal information, and I do not want it to be shared with third parties.
Please confirm receipt of this request and let me know how long it will take for my information to be completely removed from your systems.
Thank you.
”
- Spokeo https://www.spokeo.com/optout
support@spokeo.com, customercare@spokeo.com - Radaris https://radaris.com/control/privacy
support@radaris.com; info@radaris.com - Whitepages http://www.whitepages.com/suppression_requests
support@whitepages.com - Mylife - https://www.mylife.com/ccpa/index.pubview
privacy@mylife.com - Intelius https://www.intelius.com/opt-out/submit/
- BeenVerified https://www.beenverified.com/faq/opt-out/
- Acxiom https://isapps.acxiom.com/optout/optout.aspx
- Infotracer https://infotracer.com/optout/
- Lexis Nexis https://optout.lexisnexis.com/ and https://www.lexisnexis.com/privacy/directmarketingopt-out.aspx
- TruePeopleSearch https://www.truepeoplesearch.com/removal
- TruthFinder.com
- RocketReach https://wiki.onerep.com/post/rocketreach.co
- https://propeoplesearch.com/optout
- https://privateeye.com/static/process_optout
- https://golookup.com/support/optout
Work your way down these sites and use their opt-out instructions. Many will ask for a CAPTCHA or email verification. Autocomplete is your friend as there will be a lot of forms. Use the variation of your name that you typically use on forms, signups, etc.
The mega lists:
- https://github.com/glamrock/data-brokers/blob/master/data-brokers.md
- https://inteltechniques.com/workbook.html
Larger offenders:
- 411locate.com
- advanced-people-search.com
- advancedbackgroundchecks.com
- cyberbackgroundchecks.com
- familytreenow.com
- fastbackgroundcheck.com
- fastpeoplesearch.com
- findpeoplesearch.com
- peoplefinders.com
- peoplesearchnow.com
- publicrecordsnow.com
- quickpeopletrace.com
- searchpeoplefree.com
- smartbackgroundchecks.com
- truepeoplesearch.com
- usa-people-search.com
- usatrace.com
- usphonebook.com