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There’s a petition out at Do Not Mail: The Petition that’s intended to convince Congressional leaders of the need for a Do Not Mail Registry that provides a single place from which you can basically unsubscribe from all the crap that ends up in your mailbox. Sounds good to me.

But if you want to take immediate action on the junk mail, try the tips listed here:

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse: Reducing Junk Mail

It’s pretty comprehensive, and includes all the following sources of junk mail:

1. Mailing lists of major national marketers
2. Flyers and advertising supplements
3. Catalog, mail order lists and magazines
4. Pre-approved offers of credit
5. Phone books and reverse directories
6. U.S. Postal Service and change of address data file
7. Charities and nonprofits
8. Sweepstakes and prizes
9. Product registration cards and consumer surveys
10. Supermarket loyalty cards
11. Public records
12. Data compilers and mailing list companies

Even if you’re not particularly keen on going through the hassle of saving paper, fuel, and energy, you should definitely deal with the credit bureaus and your own financial institutions. Those pre-approved offers and balance transfer checks are easy targets for identity theft and can screw up your credit faster than you can fix it. For the credit bureaus, go to https://www.optoutprescreen.com/ to opt out. For your credit card and checking accounts, call the number on the back of your credit/ATM card and tell them to remove you from all mailing and phone lists and not share any information with anyone else permanently.

We have a few of these “inconvenient” bags for groceries and other uses. I actually find them more convenient than paper or plastic bags because they’re stronger and have greater capacity. The wider handle is also easier on the hands when loaded down with stuff. But the very best thing about the bags is that they help me maintain the holier-than-thou attitude that wins me so many friends.

I’m using Gmail to handle all my domain email. With 4.7GB of space for every account I create, I can access my email from anywhere with Internet access or via my Helio Ocean, take advantage of Gmail’s search capabilities and spam filters, and count on Gmail’s reliability and uptime.

https://www.google.com/a/

The mail service my hosting provider offers has actually gone down a couple times over the past several years and did nothing to combat the spam issue. Whenever I’m away I’ve had to log on to delete spam messages so that my 10MB mailboxes don’t fill up while I’m away. Plus the recent upgrade of my hosting provider’s system took away the catch-all email address feature that enabled me to personalize email addresses for different sites.

Making the switch was relatively painless and easy, and so far it’s been working great. I’ve been getting 200+ spam messages a day, all of them caught by Gmail’s filters except maybe 1 spam message every couple days. The false positives have been even less frequent. Of course, it took me a while to get used to this; I’d been accustomed to having mail messages to download to Thunderbird every time I checked mail, even if they were all spam. When this stopped being the case, I worried that I’d fucked something up in the setup, when in fact there just wasn’t any new legitimate email.

Other Google Apps are also available for your domain if you choose to turn them on: Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and Google Start Page.

Recently, I’ve noticed ads on the Internet and on TV about getting your free credit report, but usually there’s an asterisk saying something about having to sign up with some service or purchase some product. That’s not exactly free, is it?*

Anyway, you might recall I’d posted about being able to check your credit report for free once a year. What I said was a little misleading. You can check your credit report at each of the three credit reporting agencies for free once a year. Since they are more or less going to be the same, you can actually choose to check your credit report from a different agency every four months. Or you might still want to get all three at once just to compare them to one another.

Don’t forget that if you’re ever turned down because of your credit history, you have the right to request your credit report for free. This happens every time I try to finance that Ferrari.

AnnualCreditReport.com

FTC: Fair Credit Reporting Act

*No, it isn’t.

One of the first things I did with the new notebook for my sister was to run Windows Update and Office Update and install a lot of security software (anti-spyware, anti-malware, and anti-virus).

Here’s the list of free/donationware must-haves:

Firefox - Better browser, safer to use. Extensions rock.

SpywareBlaster - Prevents Spyware from being installed.

AdAware SE - Spyware removal tool.

Spybot Search and Destroy - Spyware prevention and removal tool.

AVG Anti-Virus - Free anti-virus tool. Use can use Symantec if you have the money and system resources.

Crap Cleaner - One-click deletion of your Recycle Bin, temp directories, browser cache, etc.

As always, it’s better not to get spyware on your machine, but if you do, these guys can help:

The PC Guide Discussion Forums

Once you’ve installed all this stuff, don’t forget to update the definition files! I use Yahoo! Calendar to send me email reminders of this and other tedious tasks.

Amazon’s search engine now has maps: A9 Maps

Might as well put them all out there:

Trulia gathers data from all sorts of sources and plots it out on a big Google Map for you. It also includes some stats on average prices, market indicators, and other real estate geekery. Armed with this and some of the other data that’s available, we can make some rational decisions on whether to rent or own, rent out or sell, or just get the hell out of Dodge.

As you well know, I’m a big fan of cool web apps, especially meta-apps like HousingMaps. Here’s a new one called RentSlicer for all you So-Cal kiddies still paying the man on the first of the month. It takes feeds from Craigslist classifieds and calculates average rents for different housing types and neighborhoods.

Turns out I’m getting a deal on my apartment, both in terms of the entire city, as well as the specific location I’m in.

It also turns out that if certain bloggers who work for a certain online poker site would only move out to Panorama City, we could probably save a bit more on rake.

Of course, the real way to use RentSlicer is in conjunction with HousingMaps. Use HousingMaps to find a place, use RentSlicer to comparison shop or negotiate a better deal.

I <3 Internet.

Thanks to Curbed.LA for blogging about it in the first place.

I often find it useful at work to get screenshots of web pages, but until now getting an entire page has always been a tedious process of stitching together multiple screenshots and editing out the “browser chrome.”

Screen grab! makes life easy.

Yet another reason to use Firefox instead of IE.

…but just once a year.

AnnualCreditReport.com is a joint service of the three major credit reporting companies that allows all consumers to check their credit for free as part of the FACT Act. Even if you’re not comfortable transmitting a lot of personal information like Social Security and credit card numbers over the Internet, there’s info on how you can phone or mail in your request.

I like to request these credit reports just for my own amusement, but sometimes you may notice a forgotten account or a mistake in your file. This is also a good time to ask these same companies not to sell/use your personal information for spam.