Federal Law Gives You the Right to Stop These Offers — But Only If You Ask The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) gives every American consumer an unconditional right to opt out of prescreened credit and insurance offers. Congress did not build that right into federal law because the offers are harmless. It did so …

Tax Season Brings a Surge in Identity Theft — and Your Mailbox Is Part of the Attack Surface Every year from January through mid-April, identity thieves operate under a narrow but lucrative window. The filing season for U.S. federal income taxes creates a predictable surge in personally identifiable information moving …

Physical-Mail Identity Theft Is Less Visible Than Phishing — but the FTC Data Is Real Phishing and data breaches dominate the identity-theft conversation, but physical mail fraud has never gone away. The Federal Trade Commission's Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book for 2023 documented more than $10 billion lost to …

Why Catalog Orders and Prescreen Offers Put You in the ID-Protection Market The moment a catalog order is processed, your name and address enter a list-brokerage pipeline. The catalog company may rent its customer file to cooperative database pools, which in turn sell lists to dozens of other direct marketers. If the …

The $10 Billion Problem Sitting in Your Mailbox According to the FTC Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2023, U.S. consumers reported losing more than $10 billion to fraud in 2023 — the first time reported losses have crossed that threshold. Identity theft ranked among the most-reported fraud categories, with roughly …

What Happens the Moment Fingerhut Processes Your Order Fingerhut is not simply a retailer that ships merchandise. It is also a credit issuer. The Fingerhut Credit Account and the FreshStart program are installment-credit products aimed squarely at consumers with thin credit files or subprime histories — shoppers who …

A Catalog That Signals More Than a Furniture Purchase Receiving a Restoration Hardware catalog — the company mails a thick, multi-volume "Source Book" that runs hundreds of pages and weighs several pounds — is not merely a matter of unwanted paper. It is a signal. A luxury furnishings catalog arriving at a home address …

Physical Mail Is the Forgotten Privacy Vector Most people now treat their inbox as a threat surface. Phishing links, credential-harvesting emails, and data-breach notifications have trained a generation to be cautious online. Physical mail, by contrast, feels low-tech and therefore safe. It is neither. The postal …