I always used to think of junk mail as a very minor annoyance compared to telemarketing calls and even spam e-mail. While it was too bad all those trees had to die to send me such useless "pre-approved" credit offers, at least the only cost to me was having to have a recycle bin big enough to hold all of it. But as identity theft has gone from being a petty crime to an international industry, I began to realize what a huge privacy threat is represented by all those flyers in my mailbox from sleazy mortgage brokers who know just how much I owe on my house.

So when I noticed in January that, along with the 1-888-5OPTOUT phone number, you can now also "exercise your right to notify the credit card reporting agencies not to use your credit file in connection with transactions not initiated by you" online, I decided to do it. The website isn't the most elegant website I've ever seen, and I was a bit non-plused that they wanted so much information just to take me off a mailing list. But, hey, the credit reporting companies have all that information about me already, so what the heck.

Before I'd submitted my info, I had scanned the Optoutprescreen privacy policy quickly, so I knew it might be a while before the "you've been pre-qualified" junk mail stopped completely. Still, within a few weeks, it appeared like the flow of credit offers really was drying up. But then, it started up again -- and as the weeks went by, it got worse. Whereas I'd been averaging one or two financing offers a day in my mailbox, I was now getting four or five. And the pre-approved deals seemed to be coming from even less respectable financial institutions, if such a thing is possible.

What had gone wrong? I went back and studied the OptoutPrescreen.com website again. Well, OK, they had said that "you may continue to receive certain pre-approved offers for several months," and it had been about eight weeks. Perhaps I was just being impatient, but why was I getting more junk mail than ever?

During those eight weeks the whole ChoicePoint episode had made abundantly clear just how unreliable the data brokerage business is at protecting our privacy, so I was even more concerned about my credit report info than I'd been in January. As I studied the OptoutPrescreen privacy policy again with companies like ChoicePoint in mind, my concerns deepened. For one thing, the information I'd submitted would not just be shared with the four major credit-reporting companies:

"Optoutprescreen.com or the Consumer Credit Reporting Companies, may also disclose any of the information collected, as described above, to affiliates of the Consumer Credit Reporting Companies, which are companies that are related to one of them by common ownership or affiliated with one of them by common control, or to the associated consumer reporting companies who utilize a nationwide consumer reporting company system and that may have information about you."

Do these affiliates and associates of the credit report companies include data brokerage outfits like ChoicePoint? I sure wouldn't be surprised. And why should anyone other than the agencies need to get the information I submitted for the soul purpose of opting out? It's strange they need to share my data with affiliates and associates in order not to share it. And the privacy policy goes on to say that these affiliates and associates might not be required to abide by the restrictions in the OptoutPrescreen privacy policy:

Each third party receiving this information is either required to (i) abide by the restrictions in this privacy policy and is not permitted to use or disclose the information for any purpose other than as described in this policy, or (ii) receive and use the information in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and other regulatory and legal requirements.

In other words, some of these third parties -- and they're not saying which ones - only have to abide by the very mild constraints set up by our toothless privacy laws. If one of the data brokers are indeed such a third party, does that mean they are at liberty to sell my info to the same mortgage brokers I thought my opt-out applied to? As the junk mail continued to flood in, I had to wonder.

But then, just about exactly two months after I signed up at the OptoutPrescreen site, the pre-approved offers stopped coming. It's almost like someone turned off the tap. Over the last few weeks, I haven't gotten any junk mail clearly marked as a pre-approved offer. Is it another temporary lull before another deluge begins? Was there just a glitch with the OptoutPrescreen website that has now been corrected? Or when they say it might take a few months for the offers to stop showing up, do they really mean the credit agencies and their affiliates get to sell your name like crazy for two months solid?

I certainly would like to hear from readers of the experience good or bad they've had with OptoutPrescreen.com or the 1-888-5OPTOUT number. But doesn't it strike you that there's something very bass-ackwards about this process? Why should we have to opt out at all from having sensitive information shared with every two-bit loan shark that's willing to pay the credit report companies for it? In this era of rampant identity theft, it just shouldn't work that way. Those agencies should not give my name, address, social security number, and date of birth - much less my bank and credit card information -- to anybody that I haven't chosen to ask for credit.

What do you think? Write me at Foster@gripe2ed.com or post your comments below.