YOU ARE A “JUNK MAIL” STATISTIC

According to StopTheJunkMail.com website, the age 65+ crowd is receiving the most unwanted junk mail, reports DM News. An eleven question survey conducted by Harman Research Inc., which owns StopTheJunkMail, is asking why you don’t like junk mail, and even identifies the top catalogs with the most requests for opt-outs. The company located in Boulder, Colorado is interested in improving the environment, but they also want to sell you their service to stop junk mail. Additional data in the report included that a majority of you trash your catalogs within 24 hours, one-third would rather shop online, and over three-quarters complain of too much charity junk mail. The top catalogs you don’t want include Frontgate, Pottery Barn, Travel Smith Restoration Hardware, and Victoria’s Secret. Other junk mailers you don’t like are Experian and Equifax—both data brokers and credit bureaus—InfoUSA, Bank of America, Capital One, Chase Bank, and ValPak. Ponemon Institute finds many corporations oblivious to lost laptop syndrome. In a study by this research firm, 73 percent of companies either had a loss or theft of your data in the past two years, yet they are doing little to rectify the situation. 62 percent don’t even know if their off-network equipment, such as laptops, contains sensitive information, 39 percent don’t take the security of laptops seriously, while 70 percent of all data breaches result from the loss of off-network equipment. 30 percent wouldn’t even know if the data was missing from a laptop. With statistics like these, it would appear your names and personal data go anywhere the employees want it to with no supervision by management. The Direct Marketing Association’s (DMA) “DM Consumer Response Study” announced by DM News, says 24.4 percent of respondents didn’t buy in a certain time period because it wasn’t the right time. A shocking 23.6 percent said the mailing wasn’t relevant to them, which is yet another example of the lack of consideration some junk mailers have for consumers’ time and effort. You did buy (24.7 percent) due to a good price, and 8.6 percent because of the convenience of this method of shopping. Just a few years ago the latter was the primary reason for junk mail shopping, but with the deluge of catalogs, and so many breaches of our personal data, most folks are now simply looking for a deal.