Ever wondered why you get so much junk mail from credit card companies? Moved into a house recently and started receiving lots of home equity loan advertisements? Does all that junk mail annoy you? Do you worry that you have to shred every pre-approved credit card offer that you throw out because of the threat of identity theft? Good news: you can opt-out of receiving most, if not all, of that junk mail.

Before we get to the specifics of how to stop the junk mail, let’s go over why you receive so much of this sort of junk. Financial institutions and finance companies are always looking to generate more revenue from handing out more credit cards and extending more loans. They can only milk their existing customers for so much, so they need a way to get new customers, besides through the free toaster with a new checking account advertisements.

So they call up one of the big three credit reporting agencies and ask them for a list of people that meet certain criteria. Maybe they want a list of people ages 20-30, who don’t have any recent delinquencies (e.g., late payments on existing loans), have never filed for bankruptcy, have credit scores greater than 600, and live in a certain geographic region. The credit reporting agency will let them know how many people meet those criteria and then the bank or finance company will pay for the list, which typically just consists of names and addresses. Then they print out all of their pre-approved offers and mail them off to you and your 20-something friends. It’s perfectly legal under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, but because it’s your credit report that is ultimately the source of this information, you can tell the credit reporting agencies not to include you in the solicitation / marketing lists that they sell.

Thankfully you don’t have to contact each credit reporting agency individually, you can just go to www.optoutprescreen.com or call 1-888-5-OPTOUT. You will have to give them personally identifying information, such as your name, address, and social security number, so that they can properly identify your credit report. But doing so will cause Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion to not include your name on their lists of pre-screened offers of credit.

Sadly, OptOutPrescreen.com only allows you to opt-out through their web site for five years. If you want to opt-out permanently, you have to fill out your info online and then mail in a form that they give you to print out. It’s easier to just do the electronic opt-out, just don’t be surprised when, five years from now, the credit card offers start to come back.

Not only is the service free, but it also does not adversely affect your credit report or score, so there is no need to worry that you will be negatively impacted by opting out. Of course, OptOutPrescreen.com does extol the benefits of receiving pre-approved / pre-screened offers of credit, in part because the credit reporting agencies make money off of that sort of thing. Less pessimistically, they also point out that the Federal Reserve Board believes that pre-screened solicitations “increase competition in the market for the relevant consumer financial services[which can lead to ] lower prices and an increased availability.”

If you are tired of shredding all of those offers, though, there is nothing stopping you from opting out.

Will opting out prevent you from receiving all of the solicitations that come in the mail? Unfortunately, no, but you can still take further steps to reduce your junk mail. The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has a rather cheap-looking web site for taking your name off of many companies’ mailing lists, and that extends beyond offers of credit to things like unsolicited mailers from local business, catalogs, and coupons. The DMA itself is a trade organization for businesses in direct, database, and interactive global marketing. Organizations registered with the DMA will then not send you direct mail for a period of five years after you sign up. Note that the sign-up does require you to spend a dollar, either by credit card (via their website) or by check (via the mail). Visit www.dmaconsumers.org for more on that. They also offer you the option of unsubscribing from many e-mail lists too!

If you want to remove your phone number from telemarketing lists go to www.donotcall.gov to have your name added to the National Do Not Call Registry, courtesy of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

All of that will almost certainly reduce the unsolicited marketing offers you receive, but if you’ve signed up for individual companies’ mailing or e-mail lists, you may still need to contact them directly to have your name removed. Similarly, if you are a current customer of a company - even a financial services or credit card company - you may have to contact that company directly to have them stop sending you offers.

For more information, visit the FTC’s website online, www.ftc.gov.