How to escape from the deluge of credit card offers.....

This isn't necessarily tech related, but modern life related I guess. I can't count how many credit card offers we receive in the mail each month. I have visions of a few acres of forest land somewhere being tagged with our name and the subtitle... "credit card offers". I've never followed up on an unsolicited card offer that I recall and as I was tearing one up recently, I noticed a little not at the bottom....

"You can choose to stop receiving "prescreened" offers of credit from us and other companies by calling toll-free 1.888.5.OPT.OUT. For more information about prescreened offers, please see the PRESCREEN & OPT-OUT NOTICES in the Terms and Conditions section of this offer."

So, as you can imagine I looked into it and the idea is that you can remove yourself from these prescreened offers. Essentially what happens is calling this number registers you with the credit reporting agencies as not wanting companies to pester you with unrequested offers. Of course, if joe's credit card company uses the latest lottery winners name list to compile addresses to send out offers to, you're out of luck. The process was entirely automated (Computer voice on the other end). There were a few yes/no questions and a few questions to enter numbers on the keypad. You did have to confirm name and address as well as social security number.

Now if I can only unsubscribe from those pesky bills I keep getting everything will move along just fine.... ;-)