My daughter is not even a year old yet, and in the past week she has started to get junk mail. I know that I have never put her name anywhere, and I’m 99.999% sure my wife wouldn’t either. I’m even more sure that my father wouldn’t, and her parents probably wouldn’t either. So that leaves me with no one putting her name out there.
She does have a bank account at a credit union, and a couple of stocks. Would they sell her name? She has gotten some stuff just for kids, Ranger Rick things like that, but also other crap. Luckly there have been no credit card offers yet.
So how does an 11 month old get crap in the mail? How do they know how old she is, even though she’s not old enough to get a kids magazine yet. And how the hell do I keep her from getting credit card offers and such? Just what a baby needs is bad credit. Also I thought that sending stuff like this was illegal to minors.
This really belongs in the pit, but I can hold off for now. :mad:
Vital statistics are public information, and often printed in the local “newspaper of record” used by the county. Deaths, births, divorce and marriage, Doing Business As __ and Change of Corporate Ownership, deeds and lawsuits, may all end up in a dusty tome that isn’t read but goes directly into the reference file for legal libraries and mailing list companies.
You need to watch your kids closer. A few weeks ago that time you went into the kitchen and left her in the living room, well you thought she was napping. She really started filling out credit applications and spamming her email to everyone.
I would request a credit report on her from all three agencies, she is entitled to a free one every year.
It’s not unheard of for children to have their identities stolen and it’s often not discovered for decades, until the person is old enough to be denied credit or employment due to their credit being wrecked by a fraudster.
Wouldn’t they look at births and say, well she can’t use anything lets not watse money and send her stuff? Sounds kind of pointless to me, plus I don’t think many parents would buy a magazine for an infant. Plus do they list addresses in the newspaper? I don’t really look, but I wouldn’t think they would. Some of these places might just get nasty letters from me then.
Ha! I know that a few years ago a telemarketer was bugging me and wouldn’t take NO for an answer, so I finally did their survey. I gave them my dog’s name and said that he was an unemployed college student that was $50K in debt.
Within a couple of weeks the credit card offers and junk mail started rolling in. I got a few phone calls asking for him as well. I think people kind of clued in when all he did was sniff the phone receiver though…
Infants don’t buy things, but parents (and grandparents!) do.
There is a definite, specific market for mailing lists of newborn infants. Gerbers, Pampers, Huggies, local day cares, etc. would all be interested in that.
Plus the fact many of the people compiling & selling mailing lists are less than completely ethical. They make their money from selling the list, the bigger the list the more money they make; so they have an obvious incentive to pad the list with real, deliverable names. Your kid’s name could be on lists just because of that.
