The Fate of Tyrlon and other Dubious Things

I was reading the latest issue of Popular Science (March 2008) and they had a cool article about doing everything possible to make yourself anonymous for a week and how hard that is in today’s electronics focused day and age.  One interesting tip they had was an easy way to get out of Pre-Screened Credit Card offers.  These are those silly things that probably represent half or more of the mail you receive, ones offering you “Pre-Approved Credit with Low Introductory APR!” etc.

To easily opt-out of those for 5-years, you can go to this website and fill out the information on it: http://www.optoutprescreen.com/

I would highly recommend making sure you type it correctly though, as i’m sure scammers try to impersonate the address (.net, .biz etc) to trick people.  The site will need your full information including your Social Security Number in order to process the request.  If you’ve ever ordered a credit report from one of the credit unions, you know that they do in fact need this information to track you down.  I opted out today so hopefully in a couple of months the offers should start to go away (lists are sold months in advance of mailings usually so it takes a while for the effect to trickle down).  You can also request permanent exclusion from the list but you have to actually mail them a form to do that.

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