Combatting Catalogue Spam

[annuin]

I happened on this link today, as I wandered from various Etsy pages to personal artist blogs. And sometimes you find interesting things on such quests. I found this helpful link:

http://www.catalogchoice.org/

In the past few months that we've lived here, the amount of unsolicited catalogues we've started receiving has grown to a ridiculous number, at times it's at least one a day. A lot of it seems to be kids toys and clothing catalogues, and it makes me wonder where they've been getting my details from.

Anyway, the above mentioned link is a place to unsubscribe from catalogues. They pass on requests to the merchants to stop catalogues being delivered. It takes about 10 weeks to be removed though, which is a tad unfortunate, though considering how hard it is to even be removed from email mailing lists sometimes it's not that strange.

It'll be nice to get less stuff in the mailbox that goes straight into the (recycling) bin.

Now if only I could find a way to make being on the state and national Do Not Call lists work better... the telemarketers seem to be increasing again, irregardless of being on said lists. Extremely vexing indeed!

Comments

[dreamalynn.livejournal.com]

Have you renewed yourself on the Do Not Call lists?

[tanthe.livejournal.com]

Not yet, but we only put ourselves on there in May, after we moved to this new place (new phone numbers). I'll get Prez to renew us on them again, hopefully it'll help a bit.

[dreamalynn.livejournal.com]

Perhaps, I know the initial registries were expiring and there was some controversy about whether or not numbers were released. Can't hurt, that's for sure!

[tanthe.livejournal.com]

We were on both lists (state/national) for years living in our old place, and it was quite effective indeed. So the fact that it hasn't been as effective now, or at least seems to be decreasing in effectiveness in the past months, has made me wonder.

[goawayplease.livejournal.com]

I hate that.

I got put on an amazing list at one point -- Hobby Farmer magazine was sending me subscription info! I found out that it was all HomeDepot, who were selling my address to the highest bidder. You might take a look at the companies you shop with who have your credit card info or address, especially the big box stores. It takes a while to get off the lists, but you can usually block the random stuff pretty quickly if you do a little research and digging. There are also a few companies that stop your junk mail for you...

[tanthe.livejournal.com]

It's kind of hard to figure out where it comes from sometimes.

We've been getting a magazine subscription for Cookie, some parent/kid magazine, and it's being sent to my husband PreZ. I went to their site to end the subscription, and for some reason, they also had his email address on file. Where that comes from, I have no idea.

At least that catalogchoice.org page will help with unsubscribing from the catalogs and cutting down on that junk mail.

You say HomeDepot was selling your info, did you have a credit card with them, or was it just the information they gather from you when you pay there with a credit card?

I've long since stopped giving people telephone numbers at store checkouts, because that's an obvious way for them to gather your mailing info.

Now I'll have to go and double check privacy agreements with the online retailers I deal with...

[goawayplease.livejournal.com]

I think that I gave HomeDepot my address when I was looking into getting my kitchen renovated, but I'm not sure. Their unsubscribe page made it sound like they do a fair bit of harvesting from credit card info and the like.