Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How Junk Mail Works
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
- 0:03Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
- 0:08Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
- 0:11Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and I'm sorry I was
- 0:15Speaker 1: going to do the thing. And I'm Chuff Bryant and
- 0:18Speaker 1: this is stuff you should know that was totally off
- 0:23Speaker 1: the cup that I think we should say. I think
- 0:25Speaker 1: it's been chuck. You ever been to Austin, Texas? Yeah?
- 0:29Speaker 1: I love Austin. I've heard nothing but good things. Keep
- 0:31Speaker 1: Austin weird and all. I've never been very but I
- 0:34Speaker 1: do know that if you go to Austin, Texas right now,
- 0:38Speaker 1: and you go to MLK Boulevard near the corner of
- 0:41Speaker 1: Alexander Avenue, you're gonna find a little gallery and it
- 0:45Speaker 1: is called the Flatbed Press Art Gallery. Interesting. And if
- 0:48Speaker 1: you go into there, like I said, right now, you're
- 0:50Speaker 1: going to find a piece of art in art installation.
- 0:54Speaker 1: It's called free paper. Have you heard of this? Yes?
- 0:58Speaker 1: Because you told me, Well, I'll tell everybody else. The
- 1:01Speaker 1: uh There's a woman named a Net Lawrence and she's
- 1:05Speaker 1: a Texas artist, right and basically what she did was.
- 1:08Speaker 1: She saved UM a year's worth of junk mail and
- 1:12Speaker 1: it came to total two sixty five pounds by the way,
- 1:15Speaker 1: just junk mail. And she tore it into two inch
- 1:18Speaker 1: strips and then basically installed it. UM put it together
- 1:22Speaker 1: in stacks by month, and then UM put it on shelves.
- 1:26Speaker 1: So there's twelve little separate it's almost like a cross
- 1:29Speaker 1: section of junk mail. And the way she did it,
- 1:32Speaker 1: I wouldn't have thought to do it this way, but
- 1:34Speaker 1: it really gets the point across with minimal space. It's
- 1:37Speaker 1: quite beautiful until you think about you know, it's junk mail.
- 1:41Speaker 1: So I and as I understand, she's not the only
- 1:44Speaker 1: junk male artist that's going on right now, surprising, there's
- 1:47Speaker 1: a bunch. And I have another one here and her
- 1:51Speaker 1: name is Barbara Hashimoto, an American artist and she works
- 1:55Speaker 1: with junk male. She does provocative like art installations, interactive
- 2:00Speaker 1: type of thing. She's a provocateur. And what she's done
- 2:04Speaker 1: and this is generally like most junk male artists are
- 2:07Speaker 1: probably making a political statement and an environmental statement, and
- 2:10Speaker 1: that's what she's doing. And she is in Chicago and
- 2:14Speaker 1: she set aside the junk mail from her business for
- 2:17Speaker 1: a year, so it was quite a bit more, obviously
- 2:20Speaker 1: than a person would get, and she ended up with
- 2:23Speaker 1: three thousand cubic feet of Then she shredded it, actually
- 2:26Speaker 1: with a paper shredder. She had one called junk mail
- 2:29Speaker 1: with grand piano. And what she would do is she
- 2:32Speaker 1: got this piano player with a grand piano and put
- 2:34Speaker 1: him in a in a in a room facing a
- 2:37Speaker 1: street with you know, glass that people could see and obviously,
- 2:40Speaker 1: and he would start playing this symphony some you know,
- 2:42Speaker 1: not symphony, but some you know, nice piano music. Sound
- 2:45Speaker 1: like it's such a lunkhead there. I'm a musician too.
- 2:48Speaker 1: And so he's playing the piano and she starts dumping this, uh,
- 2:50Speaker 1: the shredded junk mail on him and on the piano
- 2:53Speaker 1: as he's doing it. And basically it's a process. And
- 2:56Speaker 1: at the end of it, this guy can't even be
- 2:57Speaker 1: heard anymore. He's completely cut or the pianos completely covered,
- 3:01Speaker 1: and you hear just these little muffled, hammered sounds of
- 3:04Speaker 1: the piano string and it's the point across that, Yeah,
- 3:08Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. Okay, So for the rest of us
- 3:10Speaker 1: who have neither the time nor the inclination to play
- 3:13Speaker 1: with junk mail, right and make statements with junk mail.
- 3:16Speaker 1: I should say, um, you know, obviously it's it's annoying.
- 3:19Speaker 1: I shouldn't even say that, it's just so blatantly obvious.
- 3:22Speaker 1: But it's also kind of harmful. Junk male is harmful
- 3:25Speaker 1: extremely Um. Number One, you can very easily become the
- 3:29Speaker 1: victim of identity fraud just from preapproved credit card applications. UM.
- 3:35Speaker 1: I think there's uh something like four hundred thousand cases
- 3:41Speaker 1: of identity theft every year, um that are attributed just
- 3:46Speaker 1: to pre approved credit cards. Interesting, that's as sig Kirshner's
- 3:50Speaker 1: by the way, that's his figure. He's a CONSUMERU. That's good. Yeah,
- 3:55Speaker 1: So um, that's that's a problem right there. And well,
- 3:58Speaker 1: you know, people, my wife is a master shredder. She
- 4:01Speaker 1: is on top of our household as far as the
- 4:04Speaker 1: mail and the bills, and she shreds everything like that.
- 4:08Speaker 1: She shreds things that I mean like stupid, you don't
- 4:10Speaker 1: need to shred my sports illustrated re up thing, and
- 4:14Speaker 1: she will. And coincidentally, we've never had our identity soul.
- 4:17Speaker 1: And so people that just toss that, people that just
- 4:21Speaker 1: toss that into the trash. It's ruthly not very smart.
- 4:23Speaker 1: No it's not. I usually burn mine. That's good, just
- 4:27Speaker 1: had a spite. Well, I don't have a shredder. I
- 4:29Speaker 1: don't want to just toss it in the trance either,
- 4:31Speaker 1: so you heat your home with it, or sometimes this
- 4:33Speaker 1: is kind of weird, but sometimes I will um take
- 4:37Speaker 1: the most sensitive parts of it and tear it off
- 4:41Speaker 1: and then eat it. Really yeah, yeah, no going through
- 4:45Speaker 1: that trash pal Well, that actually what she said before
- 4:47Speaker 1: about burning it leads me to an interesting stat that
- 4:49Speaker 1: I've just flown in from the home office. Two hundred
- 4:53Speaker 1: and fifty thousand homes can actually be heated from a
- 4:56Speaker 1: single day's worth of junk male in the United States
- 4:59Speaker 1: by burning it. That would be awful. Not a single household, obviously,
- 5:03Speaker 1: it's all the junk mail in the country, right So
- 5:05Speaker 1: but I'm saying I don't think we should be setting
- 5:07Speaker 1: this on fire right well now, it's just to kind
- 5:09Speaker 1: of drive the point on the four million tons a
- 5:12Speaker 1: year in the United States alone. And a final stat, Josh,
- 5:15Speaker 1: if you're interested, forty four and this is a really
- 5:19Speaker 1: sad one of all junk mail goes unopened and is
- 5:22Speaker 1: put into a landfill eventually. Yes, and Chuck, I have
- 5:25Speaker 1: another stat for you. This is our stat Heavy Junk
- 5:28Speaker 1: Mail Podcast special. Um, did you know that with the
- 5:32Speaker 1: amount of paper that's thrown out by Americans every year? Um,
- 5:36Speaker 1: you're junk mail and just paper. Well, junk mail is
- 5:38Speaker 1: part of it. That's include junk mail. This is just paper.
- 5:41Speaker 1: But it's gonna leave me back around at a second,
- 5:43Speaker 1: so so bear with me. Um, you could build a
- 5:46Speaker 1: twelve ft tall wall from New York to Los Angeles. Really,
- 5:50Speaker 1: that's annually. They should build that wall. Think about how
- 5:53Speaker 1: how incredibly thin paper is. You can make it twelve
- 5:56Speaker 1: feet tall and all the way from New York to
- 5:58Speaker 1: l A How thick? Yeah, okay, it would be much
- 6:03Speaker 1: of a wall. No, no, no, I mean like you're
- 6:05Speaker 1: laying a piece of paper flat on the ground and
- 6:07Speaker 1: stacking them up until so it would be what eight
- 6:11Speaker 1: and a half inches? Why, I thought you were taping
- 6:13Speaker 1: it all together so it would be would be stupid. Well,
- 6:16Speaker 1: this is the Clean Air Counsel. I would like to
- 6:18Speaker 1: think that they wouldn't toy with me like that. But
- 6:20Speaker 1: you know, as always, as Mark Twain said, there are
- 6:22Speaker 1: three kinds of lies. Lies, damn lies and statistics. You
- 6:25Speaker 1: should always take statistics with a grain of salt. But
- 6:29Speaker 1: how about this. Clearly there's a ton of junk mail
- 6:32Speaker 1: that's wasted every year. Can we bring on that or
- 6:35Speaker 1: a million tons? Yes, that is a statistic. Two Okay, So, um,
- 6:40Speaker 1: you've got credit card fraud, you've got waste. But not
- 6:42Speaker 1: just um waste. It's also input. You have to consider
- 6:47Speaker 1: the input. It takes a tremendous amount of water actually
- 6:51Speaker 1: to make paper, um, which is kind of odd because
- 6:54Speaker 1: papers dry, But to separate the fibers and make this
- 6:59Speaker 1: in a pulp, they add tons of water. There's actually
- 7:03Speaker 1: a process where they first they washed wood off right
- 7:07Speaker 1: at all any impurities. They send it into a steamer
- 7:11Speaker 1: for four hours. Then they chop it up and turns
- 7:15Speaker 1: into a pulp, and then they add water to the
- 7:18Speaker 1: aratio of about two hundred to one two hundred parts
- 7:21Speaker 1: water to one part pulp. Yeah, and then they dry
- 7:26Speaker 1: it out. Right. Were you laughing in my amazement? No,
- 7:29Speaker 1: it's like I was laughing at the this this astronomical
- 7:32Speaker 1: use of water to make paper, right, so um, and
- 7:35Speaker 1: then they dry it out. Um. And when they're drying
- 7:38Speaker 1: it out, they're actually using um steam heated rollers. So
- 7:42Speaker 1: there's more water right there. And then there's another part
- 7:44Speaker 1: to the the end before they do the final dry
- 7:47Speaker 1: where they add more water and then dry it out
- 7:50Speaker 1: to make it slick and glossy. Yes, so that's a
- 7:53Speaker 1: lot of water. Of course, a lot of trees are
- 7:56Speaker 1: are are used specifically for paper about a hundred million
- 8:00Speaker 1: a year, is that right, that's what the University of
- 8:02Speaker 1: Oregon says. If I'm not mistaken, that's a lot of trees.
- 8:06Speaker 1: It is a lot of trees, and it's kind of
- 8:08Speaker 1: sad to think about it, but there's many are grown
- 8:10Speaker 1: specifically to become paper. Right. Yes, I must say that
- 8:15Speaker 1: paper mills do reuse water just for cost effectiveness. Um,
- 8:22Speaker 1: so they are reusing water. But still there's twenty eight
- 8:26Speaker 1: billion gallons of water used annually to produce paper. Okay,
- 8:30Speaker 1: that's input, So you know that's if they're reusing it,
- 8:34Speaker 1: they're still using a lot of water. And I hate
- 8:36Speaker 1: to use the I don't mean to be inclusive and
- 8:38Speaker 1: exclusive and in group and out group like the paper
- 8:41Speaker 1: industry is just the evil you know, tobacco industries, which
- 8:45Speaker 1: God knows they're evil, but um, you're holding paper right now,
- 8:48Speaker 1: I am holy paper. I use paper, but I recycle
- 8:50Speaker 1: all paper like you. You know, we have that single
- 8:53Speaker 1: stream recycling thing where all the waste baskets at the
- 8:55Speaker 1: desks are basically recycling. I never throw anything away in there,
- 9:00Speaker 1: the only paper. Yeah, I practice what I preach. Friend,
- 9:04Speaker 1: I'm not calling you to death. But all right, that's fine.
- 9:06Speaker 1: I can settle down because my fight or flight response
- 9:08Speaker 1: is just pumping. Okay, so chuck. It's a waste, right,
- 9:13Speaker 1: It's annoying, it's potentially threatening as far as finances go.
- 9:18Speaker 1: With identity threat, what can an individual do to fight
- 9:24Speaker 1: the good fight against direct mail? Well, which, by the way,
- 9:27Speaker 1: I can give you one more figure. This is a figure,
- 9:30Speaker 1: not a status, so it's much more reliable. First of all,
- 9:33Speaker 1: did you even know that there's such a thing as
- 9:35Speaker 1: um direct mail pharmaceuticals? No, get pills through the mail.
- 9:41Speaker 1: Now you can get pills through the mail, yes, but
- 9:43Speaker 1: this is like advertising direct mail advertising for pharmaceuticals. I
- 9:48Speaker 1: have never gotten one. I don't know. It's probably because
- 9:51Speaker 1: I don't have a primary physician. But the direct male
- 9:55Speaker 1: pharmaceutical market alone in two thousand and eight racked up
- 9:59Speaker 1: ten points x billion in sales based specifically on direct mail.
- 10:04Speaker 1: Their return on investment for one dollar was ten dollars
- 10:07Speaker 1: twenty seven cents. Every dollar they spent on direct mail
- 10:10Speaker 1: advertising rate them in ten dollars and twenty seven cents
- 10:13Speaker 1: in two eight. That's just one sector. Well, we're in
- 10:16Speaker 1: the wrong business totally. I've always said we need to
- 10:18Speaker 1: start making our own pharmaceutics. Never looking is just not paying.
- 10:23Speaker 1: We're not making ten billion, I'll tell you that. And no,
- 10:24Speaker 1: we're not or anything actually, So what can be done.
- 10:27Speaker 1: I'm gonna leave the second part to you about the
- 10:31Speaker 1: official websites and things. I thought you left the first
- 10:33Speaker 1: part to me. I'm gonna go with the first part.
- 10:36Speaker 1: One thing you can do is you can actually send
- 10:38Speaker 1: it back. Uh. This is not about stopping it from
- 10:41Speaker 1: coming to your home, but instead of being angry and
- 10:44Speaker 1: just burning it or whatever you do, shooting it with
- 10:47Speaker 1: your eating it with your gun, eating it and processing
- 10:49Speaker 1: it through your own miserable body, some ink is better
- 10:52Speaker 1: than others. I can tell you. I bet you can
- 10:55Speaker 1: actually send it back. Um. Junk mail is usually first
- 10:58Speaker 1: class or third class, which is called bulk rate. And uh,
- 11:03Speaker 1: if you if your envelope is stamped, address correction requested
- 11:07Speaker 1: or return postage guaranteed. You can return it unopened to
- 11:11Speaker 1: the sender by writing refused return to center on the envelope.
- 11:14Speaker 1: Stick it back in your mailbox, and flip up your
- 11:16Speaker 1: little flag. Oh flag, I didn't think you're just a flag. Yes,
- 11:19Speaker 1: flip up your flag. But you can only do this
- 11:22Speaker 1: on bulk mail with that special notification on it. Um.
- 11:26Speaker 1: If you have a solicitation solicitation sorry that has postage
- 11:30Speaker 1: paid reply envelope, then just put a note saying that
- 11:34Speaker 1: you want to be removed from the mailing list and
- 11:37Speaker 1: include that mailing label and or write refused on it
- 11:41Speaker 1: and you might actually get taken off that list. So
- 11:43Speaker 1: that's one way to do it. Well, thanks to our
- 11:45Speaker 1: friend the Internet, it's gotten a lot easier to stop
- 11:48Speaker 1: getting junk mail ryes um. There are actual sites that
- 11:52Speaker 1: are dedicated to you not getting junk mail. And remember
- 11:56Speaker 1: they do not call registry right. Well, there's been several
- 11:59Speaker 1: attempts to create a you know, do not mail registry
- 12:02Speaker 1: basically UM, and it hasn't taken off. It may in
- 12:06Speaker 1: the future, who knows, but as it as it stands
- 12:08Speaker 1: for now, it's up to the individual to take care
- 12:11Speaker 1: of their own junk mail stream right um, And like
- 12:16Speaker 1: I said, the Internet is a great tool for that.
- 12:18Speaker 1: They're like, uh, opt out prescreen dot com is one
- 12:21Speaker 1: place you can go. And basically the reason we have
- 12:25Speaker 1: junk males because your name and address in personal information
- 12:29Speaker 1: is actually valuable. It's valuable on its own in a
- 12:33Speaker 1: very small amount fractions and fractions of assent as a
- 12:36Speaker 1: single individual. Well when you put it together with thousands
- 12:39Speaker 1: and tens and thousands and hundreds of thousands of other
- 12:42Speaker 1: people millions, millions, I'll go with millions, um, then all
- 12:46Speaker 1: of a sudden that list as a whole becomes valuable.
- 12:50Speaker 1: So people who have your information or millions of people's
- 12:53Speaker 1: information can put these things together and make some extra
- 12:56Speaker 1: scratch on the side by selling it to direct marketers.
- 12:59Speaker 1: And one group that aggregates these this information are credit
- 13:03Speaker 1: reporting bureaus. They are allowed by law to give out
- 13:05Speaker 1: certain personal information about you, like name, address, preferences to
- 13:09Speaker 1: some stuff that you've provided, to sell it for their
- 13:12Speaker 1: own behalf. You get absolutely nothing for it and they
- 13:15Speaker 1: make money off of it. Yeah, and what you get
- 13:17Speaker 1: in the end, it's junk mail. So the opt out
- 13:19Speaker 1: prescreen dot com website basically UH makes it so the
- 13:23Speaker 1: the four major credit reporting bureaus can't sell your stuff
- 13:27Speaker 1: any longer. Um. And it'll take a little wild to
- 13:31Speaker 1: get off the lists, but you will eventually hopefully be purged.
- 13:35Speaker 1: Um and that last for five years or I think
- 13:37Speaker 1: you can also do a lifetime block right on selling.
- 13:41Speaker 1: Why wouldn't you just do that would be great? I
- 13:42Speaker 1: don't know, it doesn't make any sense. In five years,
- 13:45Speaker 1: I might want to get this junk mail, so I'll
- 13:47Speaker 1: just go with the five. Well, you know, actually there
- 13:49Speaker 1: are there's this this group called the Direct Market Association
- 13:54Speaker 1: UH and they may be um, the bane of most
- 13:57Speaker 1: people's existence because they're actually a trade association of direct
- 14:03Speaker 1: marketers right and UM. Luckily, they have a nice little
- 14:07Speaker 1: website that you can access to get out, to opt out.
- 14:11Speaker 1: It's called d m A consumers dot org and they
- 14:14Speaker 1: have basically the same thing that you'll find an opt
- 14:16Speaker 1: out pre screen. They have fifty member companies and it's
- 14:20Speaker 1: not just for profit business. Nonprofits, political action groups are
- 14:25Speaker 1: members of of the d m A. And when you
- 14:29Speaker 1: get taken off the d m AS list, you get
- 14:31Speaker 1: taken off of all these people's mailing lists. So that's
- 14:34Speaker 1: another thing you can do. Um, there's steps you can take,
- 14:38Speaker 1: or actually there's steps that you cannot take that can
- 14:41Speaker 1: keep you off warranty cards. Warranty cards, Like think about this.
- 14:45Speaker 1: When I researched this article, I hadn't thought about it
- 14:47Speaker 1: at the time, and I thought back to, you know,
- 14:51Speaker 1: when I filled out in a warranty card, because I
- 14:54Speaker 1: must admit I am one of the suckers who actually
- 14:57Speaker 1: has filled out a warranty card and melded in. Um,
- 15:00Speaker 1: why the Queens and Art company who's blender I just purchased,
- 15:04Speaker 1: would care whether my UM household would be most interested
- 15:08Speaker 1: in hunting and fishing magazines or skydiving magazines, Like it
- 15:13Speaker 1: didn't dawn any at the time, Like that's a little odd.
- 15:16Speaker 1: And I think I even remember checking a box like, well,
- 15:19Speaker 1: you know, we're not really into hunting and fishing, but
- 15:21Speaker 1: we're more into skydiving these days, so check, you know,
- 15:25Speaker 1: And and then all of a sudden, like I got
- 15:27Speaker 1: skydiving magazine. Come ons, you know there's a master card
- 15:31Speaker 1: is sending me like a pre approved card with a
- 15:33Speaker 1: skydiver d like we know you'll like this, sucker, and uh,
- 15:37Speaker 1: it's it's it's bad. So never fell out a warranty
- 15:39Speaker 1: card because you know we talked about extended warranties before
- 15:43Speaker 1: you have your receipt. Warranty, that's your warranty. Because if
- 15:47Speaker 1: they say you're you have a warranty, and you have
- 15:49Speaker 1: the receipt, then you have the warranty. You don't need
- 15:51Speaker 1: to fill out a card to ensure that you have
- 15:53Speaker 1: the warranty. Exactly. It's just a big scam. It is
- 15:56Speaker 1: a huge scam. You know those bits that sometimes you'll hear,
- 15:59Speaker 1: like the morning radio shows do where they'll call like
- 16:02Speaker 1: the head of the telemarketing company, you know, midnight and
- 16:06Speaker 1: wake him up and say, how do you like it?
- 16:08Speaker 1: You do you know your company and all that stuff.
- 16:10Speaker 1: We should find out the person. There's one person, I'm
- 16:13Speaker 1: sure where all the junk mail originates. Find out where
- 16:16Speaker 1: this dude lives, and let's just go and like wallpaper
- 16:18Speaker 1: his house with grocery store flyers. His name is Rusty. Yeah,
- 16:23Speaker 1: he would. Rusty would wake up and try to look
- 16:25Speaker 1: out his window and all he would see is like
- 16:27Speaker 1: ground beef dollar. He'd be like a piano player with
- 16:30Speaker 1: a bunch of choke mail dumped on him right, and
- 16:32Speaker 1: here is screams sorry, Rusty exactly you've probably saw on yourself, Rusty,
- 16:37Speaker 1: Um the chuck. We're not quite done here. Okay, there's
- 16:41Speaker 1: other there's actually businesses that you can subscribe to that
- 16:45Speaker 1: will go to the trouble of getting you off list.
- 16:48Speaker 1: I know our producer recommended one. Yeah. Um it's Green Dimes,
- 16:52Speaker 1: I believe um. And basically our producer Jerry said that
- 16:57Speaker 1: she there's a free service, um where you can just
- 17:02Speaker 1: kind of I guess, do the basic job. But there's
- 17:05Speaker 1: their twenty dollar annual membership fee. Actually, these people actively work.
- 17:11Speaker 1: If they can't send something in on your behalf, like
- 17:14Speaker 1: it needs your signature, maybe your Social Security number, which
- 17:17Speaker 1: you will be asked for once in a while. This
- 17:19Speaker 1: is not you being lured into an even bigger scam, um,
- 17:23Speaker 1: but they need it for verification. I'm not certain that
- 17:26Speaker 1: they need it, but they require it for verification. So
- 17:29Speaker 1: if Green Dimes can't just do it as a third
- 17:31Speaker 1: party telling somebody else to back off, they send you
- 17:34Speaker 1: all the stuff that you like, these form letters, but
- 17:37Speaker 1: you sign mailing back to them and Green Dime mails
- 17:40Speaker 1: it for you, and then they monitor and by the way,
- 17:43Speaker 1: I don't own any stock in Green Dimes or anything.
- 17:44Speaker 1: I'm just kind of taken by this company. They may
- 17:46Speaker 1: not be publicly traded anyway. They well, my dad didn't
- 17:49Speaker 1: found it, if that's what you mean. Um. They they
- 17:53Speaker 1: monitor all these lists um mailing lists every every month
- 17:58Speaker 1: on a monthly basis to make sure your names stays
- 18:00Speaker 1: off and if not, they go after the people. But
- 18:03Speaker 1: just we're twenty bucks a year if you ask, and
- 18:05Speaker 1: they plant five trees when you join. Really, well, there
- 18:09Speaker 1: you have it. Four bucks a tree. Yeah, that's awesome.
- 18:12Speaker 1: Sure it dip it. Well, it depends on the tree. Yeah,
- 18:14Speaker 1: that's true. I'm gonna sign up for that. I didn't
- 18:16Speaker 1: know about that. And and remember never fell out a
- 18:19Speaker 1: warranty card. Don't You Never respond to a publisher's clearing
- 18:22Speaker 1: house sweep steaks one thing? What does it say on
- 18:26Speaker 1: that you may have already won, But a lot of
- 18:29Speaker 1: times it's name in your name. It'll just say yeah.
- 18:32Speaker 1: If you respond to that, you will end up on
- 18:33Speaker 1: what's called a sucker list. And and and that's actually
- 18:36Speaker 1: what it's called in the industry, because you have shown
- 18:39Speaker 1: that you were gullible and your junk mail will increase
- 18:42Speaker 1: tremendously and your name pops up on the sucker list,
- 18:45Speaker 1: and that's when all these companies go, oh, we got one,
- 18:47Speaker 1: we got one, let's get in there. Yeah, that's the
- 18:50Speaker 1: that's the lead of leads right there. And that's my
- 18:52Speaker 1: impression of a junk mail dude. Yeah, that was good. Thanks,
- 18:56Speaker 1: So there you go. UM. I also want to recommend
- 18:59Speaker 1: an article on MSNBC by uh Sig Kersheimer, whose name
- 19:04Speaker 1: I mispronounced at the beginning of this podcast, Sorry, Mr Kerheimer. UM.
- 19:08Speaker 1: It's called Hey, junk mail, follow these steps and Mr
- 19:11Speaker 1: Kersheimer has going to the trouble of basically giving every name, address,
- 19:16Speaker 1: telephone number, and website you would need to completely rid
- 19:20Speaker 1: your life a junk mail. So it's definitely worth reading.
- 19:23Speaker 1: And if you want to read our take on it,
- 19:24Speaker 1: you can type can I Stop getting junk Mail in
- 19:27Speaker 1: the search bar at how stuff works dot com for
- 19:33Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
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