This may be the most useful website you ever read about on TechCrunch.
New La Jolla, California startup ProQuo launches this evening to help you battle all the evil that is being perpetually perpetrated against your personal information. Get countless credit card offers, catalogs and other junk in your mailbox everyday? ProQuo intends to do what the NoCall list did for telesales calls for all that stuff, too. Which means, kill it off.
ProQuo users not only save the hassle of dealing with junk mail (and the resulting identity theft risk), but also benefit the environment by cutting down on the amount of paper that’s shoved in their face.
After registration you are presented with a dozen or so types of mailing lists (coupons, credit cards, catalogs, etc.). You can stop most of them with a single click. Others require printing out a form or going to another website. But at the end of the process, you can kill off a ton of unwanted mail.
The company was founded in July 2006 and has raised $5 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson. In the future, they plan to expand to give users more control over other types of personal information, including financial and medical records.
Note that we’ve also recently written about CatalogChoice, which focuses on stopping unwanted catalogs. Services we’ve covered which focus on stopping identity theft include TrustedID and LifeLock.
As an aside, in my interview with CEO Steven Gal, he mentioned that the five year anniversary of the Do Not Call Registry is coming up this January. Anyone who registered at the site when it first went live is in for a nasty surprise - the opt out is valid for only five years. If you wait until January to do it again, you’ll have to put up with thirty days of telesales calls while the request goes active. And telesales companies are gearing up to make your life a living hell for those thirty days.
useless post. How does the service work? How does it block junk mail?
Mike,
“ProQuo intends to do what the NoCall list did for telesales calls for all that stuff, too. Which means, kill it off.”
I believe that USPS gets a large percentage of their revenue from delivering bulk mail. As much as I’ve tried, I have not been successful in stopping junk mail. USPS will simply not honor any complaint that you make about junk mail. As for them stopping junk mail, I’d have to call shenanigans. Only thing that would stop it would be a law and gov will NEVER allow that law because it would kill USPS.
Stephen
Reduce junk mail and plant trees:
http://www.greendimes.com/
Mike,
As far as I can tell, you have to visit 3rd party sites and fill in their forms yourself (and yes, part with your social secuirty number). I was hoping for something more automatic, not just bookmarks….
–S’l
I take that back; for some reason, this time around, I was able to opt out of many ’services’ without leaving their site. nice!
–S’l
I don’t get it? WHY will I stop receiving junk mail? All the catalog companies are very analytical, and they know each catalog they send makes them a big profit. And they have done studies that show that even people who say they don’t want the catalog actually purchase from it sometimes. So they keep mailing them. And keep making money.
WHY will my clicking on something stop the junk mail? The article doesn’t explain this at all. I went to the website and it looks like they have a few ways of guiding you through the removal processes of the different databases, but from my experience it is pretty hard to get off of them.
I don’t understand where the identity verification is here. Can’t you just signup and remove anyone from all mailings listed?
You had me at “Kill Junk Mail”.
Would have been nice if you had said “snail mail” in the title. I was hoping for a real solution against spam…
Thank you for useful information.
No, the USPS will not do anything. I’ve had that fight with them and they say they are obligated to deliver to the address on the label if it says something like “Current resident”.
When I do get junk mail, it usually has a postage paid envelope in it. I write “Please take me off your list” on the response card and then stuff the envelope with as much heavy junk material as I can fit and mail it back. This costs the company more since they pay the postage. If everyone did this, they might get the message.
For catalogs, I call the 800 subscription number and asked to be removed.
Works for me and overall, I get relatively little junk mail.
“We need need your name and address to effectivley stop businesses from buying and selling this information.”
The incorrect spelling of “effectivley” is *really* selling me on this service.
And what is the solutions when an important mail being found in junk box and the spam in inbox?
Anyone who believes this is …..
nm
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
DoNotCall
DoNotMail
DoNotSpam
ENFORCE THEM!!!
They need a facebook app for this. I cancelled a bunch of junk mail. I wish I could do it for multiple houses, to save my family the trouble. What a timely idea, It would be great to be able to control catalogs, free newspapers. Maybe someday people will choose select to receive more paper. Oh dear.
No 10X
I have junk filter on my incredimail and it’s great!!
Were is the money in making a Business Plan like this.
I see no cash flow into ProQuo.
Hmm, the signup page is not secure, unauthenticated as reported by FF2, doesn’t give me a warm fuzzy feeling in giving up my personal info, so I stopped.
michael, it’s cool to get excited about a new company like this, but there’s no need to jump up and down on the arm of the sofa until after it’s actually been kicked around quite a bit…the service seems like a sketch set of bookmark shortcuts designed to simplify removal, but not a real registry a la govt donotcall…
It is good to see someone doing something about it. If they are successful, would they go after spam email then?
This is quite easy to do on your own. Besides GreenDimes and their hippy free love nature bullshit approach I can’t see how anyone can manage sustainable income from this type of service.
P.S.
http://www.stopjunkmail.org/
http://www.p2pays.org/main/junk.asp
I don’t mind the written junk mail…too much…but how bout that spam?
This is great. I hope they can reduce the amount of junk mail I get.
Won’t work. These guys don’t understand the business model for direct marketing.
What if they sent you something more useful?
A calendar, a fridge magnet, an informational sheet about the branches in their area, with their addresses, a personal letter from their would-be bank manager, a complimentary movie poster, a christmas (or any other occasion) card, anything different.
Would that give you a better impression of their efforts to directly market to you?
The FTC has already stated that they will NOT automically expire the Do Not Call list. They are putting the purge on hold while Congress debates whether to make the list permanent.
See http://www.dmnews.com/cms/dm-n.....42812.html or http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/2.....2007102315.
Please consider updating the original post, because people are starting to panic and scam phishing emails are sure to follow.
…isn’t it a little odd that they include the “National Do Not Call Registry” as a “telemarketing list”?…so if you select to have your name removed from that list then you’re going to be put back ON the the telemarketers’ lists?…I definitely don’t want that.
all for no junk mail