cwmoriarty

📭 cwmoriarty’s Guide to Opting Out

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

Phase 1: ~30 minutes of effort, ~80% reduction in junk mail and calls

Opt out for Junk Mail/unsolicited calls

https://www.donotcall.gov/

Enroll any and all phone numbers

https://www.dmachoice.org/

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.

https://optoutprescreen.com

Five year opt-out via web, or permanent via mailer.

Phase 1b: Third party bulk removal/opt-out services

https://incogni.com/deal/?recurring_goal_id=917

https://onerep.com/promo/

Onerep are also worth trying. Use the Free tier.

https://www.kanary.com/

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.

Phase 1c: Specific catalogs/mailers/marketing material

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

Phase 2: ~1 hour of effort, 80% reduction in data brokers to reduce identity theft

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 [email protected], [email protected]
Radaris https://radaris.com/control/privacy [email protected]; [email protected]
Whitepages http://www.whitepages.com/suppression_requests [email protected]
Mylife - https://www.mylife.com/ccpa/index.pubview [email protected]
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

Phase 3: 1-3 hours of effort, long tail of ~20% reduction of data brokers

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:

Larger offenders: