I’m sure celebs get plenty of letters from fans and assorted nutjobs, but does, say, President Obama or Michael Jackson or (insert really famous person of your choice) get the sort of crap that comes through most of our doors? Pre-approved credit card offers*, catalogues of bizarre kitchen equipment or stay-pressed polyester slacks, that kind of thing?
I don’t know why this questions has just occurred to me, but there you are.
*OK, not so much nowadays
I don’t know for sure, but I would think their names and addresses would appear on the same junk mail lists that yours and mine does. The difference is that they have a person or staff to open up every piece of mail they get and throw away the junk so they would never see it.
I recently moved to a different state and it was refreshing not to get junk mail for a few weeks… that is, until they figured out that I had moved and now I am slowly starting to get it again. They should require us to opt-in before they are allowed to send us anything unsolicited…
But would they? I’d have thought most celebrities would try to keep their addresses secret as far as possible, to avoid stalkers, nutters, gawpers and other undesirable people ending with -er.
Yes but even celebrities have things like cell phones, magazine subscriptions, credit cards, etc. Although these things may not be in their names, they will result in being added to mailing lists. Also, the cheapest sort of junk mail is addressed simply to Resident.
I think in many cases their bills and stuff like that are sent to their business managers address. So the managers would also get their junk mail.
Some celebrities also use an “out-of-town” name for when they stay incognito at hotels. I suspect some junk mail is sent out under those names too. (There’s a word for the “out-of-town name” but I can’t recall it at the moment.)
Nom de voyage?
When I moved, I got junk mail right away. But it was addressed to “Occupant”.
I don’t know if Mark Hamill counts as “(really) famous,” but when my wife worked for him, one of her jobs was to open mail. It included a lot of junk mail just like anyone would get.
This seems like a good thread to ask:
My college has sent me the alumni magazine at about ten addresses, although I have never told them I moved. I haven’t gotten it for a while now, but they followed me somehow for quite a while. How? Is there a private for-sale database, or does the PO consider a change of address form to be public information? Is that why I don’t get it any more? I don’t think I ever changed my address with the PO, I just went on all relevant web sites and changed my account address.
They can get your new address from various places , including the credit bureaus.
Also the PO will give someone your new address for a small fee - they just need to put something like “forwarding service requested” on the envelope - that means it gets forwarded to you plus your new address is sent back to the sender.
This was part of my last job at a university (although I wasn’t on the technical end). Your alma mater has a database of all its alumni. They regularly buy NCOA updates (National Change of Address) and new addresses are uploaded to their database automatically. I believe they get these from the USPS. You didn’t even get a forwarding order when you moved? Because those are also used to update alumni addresses. One of my first jobs when I was still in college (I believe it’s more automated now) was going through stacks of photocopied forwarding orders and updating alumni addresses.
When you get to be a wealthy old alumnus, they’ll start hitting you up in earnest for those contributions, depending on how rich you get. There are several pay databases that have addresses of pretty much everyone in the country so it’s never too hard to track people down, unless your name is John Smith.
I had a friend who was a low level grunt at a credit card company data center. He said that there were lots of celebrities who had credit cards in their real names (he said that they would look up famous peoples credit cards for fun). If they have credit cards in their name, it is reasonable to believe they will get junk mail with their name on it.