You could be a little old lady who has been housebound for 20 years, in a wheelchair, who has no use for a car, but they don't care. Vendors will send you their sale offers because you are a living human being who has a fair to good credit rating.
Perhaps you are getting more telemarketer calls than you used to get. Or maybe you are seeing an increase in the junk mail that comes to your house or to your email addresses.
Since 2017, there has been an upsurge in unsolicited life insurance, new/used car sales and credit card offers.
Vendors who send their offers to you usually have already accessed your credit info or at the very least, your total credit score.
Because some search engines carry names of people who have been dead for years, the date of the last activity on a credit check tells them whether or not you are still alive, and are a good risk (i.e. if you can afford their product) before they extend their offer. They don't want to waste their money on people who either have died or are so poor they can't afford to buy their product.
Maggie's father died three years ago and stuff still gets delivered in his name to his last address before he died.
Where did they get your name in the first place? They got your name from a trigger, for example:
--- you recently moved to a new home, or
--- maybe you applied for a new credit card, or
--- purchased/ rented something on installment payments (house, furniture, car), or
--- applied for a mortgage, or some kind of a loan or a line of credit, or
--- dropped a kid off at college, or
--- opened a new bank account, with or without a debit or credit card attached to it.
--- updated/changed your contact information on websites, at stores, at financial institutions or reporting bureaus.
--- leased a car
--- filed an insurance claim
--- gave birth to a child
--- got married or divorced
These are all recorded events - triggers - which are funneled into the information highway so companies can make their best pitches to you.
Your information is sold many times over: to telemarketing companies, to scammers, and to databases (like White pages, Intellius, Yahoo, and Google) which is then fed into search engines.
- as a new parent,
- a new credit card holder,
- a kid in college,
- someone who can benefit from life insurance, Medicare, etc.
That's why your name, address, date of birth, and phone number show up in places you never shared them and why your statistics are current on search sites like whitepages dot com, radaris dot com and other information sites.
Their bottom line is to know whether or not you are a real live person.
Credit card companies, housing and car ownership companies (and any vendor who wants to see your credit rating) can do so in any of these ways:
- a credit report 'inquiry' (short - tells them your score and if you have debt),
- a 'soft pull' (which gives just your credit score, name, address, and how long you lived there) or
- they can ask for a 'full credit' report (long) in order to approve you for a credit card, any kind of loan or line of credit for example
The reason they do it is so they don't waste their time sending offers to someone who has a lousy credit rating.
This is an invasion of your privacy and if you are concerned about your privacy and the amount of solicitations you receive, then you need to put a stop to their access to your credit information.
SOLUTIONS
The first thing you should do is get a copy of your credit report -- not just the credit rating, but the full report -- especially if it has been more than 90 days since you last checked. But don't pay for it.
Check with your credit card company to see if it is their policy to provide you with one free credit report per year.
If not, you can use Credit Karma which is 100% free, no introductory offers, just free. You can monitor your credit score 24/7 if you want to and it won't cost you a cent. Contrary to popular belief, on Credit Karma, there is no charge to check your scores or to run full credit history.
Avoid any 'free' credit report site who asks for a credit card to hold that will be charged later.
-- It is too hard to remember to cancel the service before your card is charged or when the introductory period expires.
-- When you get to a credit card pay screen, simply X out of it and don't give any more information. What you entered up to this point is not saved on their database. They didn't receive it because you didn't hit ENTER on the last screen after the credit card request.
If you are in a position where you already gave your credit card info to a website for credit report monitoring services (probably because you couldn't find a free site), then don't forget to cancel before the introductory period expires. Some renew annually when it rolls over so you need to be careful of that too.
Write down the start date, website URL with the name of credit report company and their phone number on your calendar or daybook, so you can cancel and not be charged.
DID YOU KNOW?
For every full credit report that is pulled for your name (or joint if married) OR for every 5 credit inquiries that ask just your credit score, your actual credit score can go down from 10 points to as much as 50 points, depending on who is requesting and how often they do it.
All those offers you get in the mail (car sales ads, life insurance, credit cards, home refinance, etc) they have already pulled some kind of an inquiry on you to know if you are a good risk. Each time they do that, it reduces your score.
To get your credit report to stop generating reports to inquiries and to keep anyone from accessing your credit info:
-- Contact each of the three top credit reporting agencies
-- Tell them you want to put a freeze on inquiries to your credit report account.
This way no one can make an inquiry or get a full credit report unless you give permission or unfreeze the accounts yourself.
HOW TO READ YOUR CREDIT REPORT
When you have your full credit report from all three agencies in front of you, check to see if any of the companies who sent you credit card offers in the mail are listed as "inquiries."
Then, notice who their parent companies are. Google it, if you can't tell. One of the reasons you are being solicited with their ads is because each credit card has partners or sponsors and at the time you signed up with the parent company, you had to agree to be registered to receive solicitations from them either :
-- in the mail,
-- inside your credit card statements,
-- to your email accounts (email providers also have partners),
-- to your social media accounts (which often show up in sidebars on Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
These are all outlets for them to spam people with advertising. Because you are signed up to get offers from them and their sponsors, that is why you are being targeted.
THE FIX
Go to your settings on each company's website and click "unsubscribe" or "OPT OUT." The changes usually take effect within 10 days. Clicking "Mark As Spam" or "Unsubscribe" on an email doesn't take care of it for all of them, only for some of them. You have to go to their website and do it.
ACTION ALERT
About freezing your credit reports: Even if the companies who sent you credit card offers aren't listed on your credit report, still put a freeze on your credit. This will help preserve your credit rating so you won't see a drop in your score.
IMPORTANT
When you know you are going to buy a big-ticket item -- a house, a car, or any large purchase that might require a credit check, unfreeze your credit report account about a month before the event.
If you don't unfreeze, your credit won't be approved at the time you are in the store to buy that big item. Unfreeze at least 4 weeks before you intend to make the purchase.
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