Why is the NRA selling my address?

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C

'Card

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Feb 20, 2006
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Location
Raleigh, NC
I accidentally let my NRA membership lapse for a few months last year. Yeah, I know... they'd obviously sent me reminders and urgent notices and such, but they send me a metric ton of mail every month, and most of it seems to carry urgent and dire warnings of impending doom (which can only be averted if I whip out my checkbook) so I'd missed it.

The point being that when I re-joined late last year, I did it online for the first time, and I apparently made a small typo in the process - I put in a comma instead of a period after the abbreviation of "street". Meaning... (as an example) instead of "123 Elm St." I put "123 Elm St,". Now, this is not a big deal, and obviously hasn't interfered with me getting my usual metric ton of mail from them, but it has made something pretty clear that I only suspected before - specifically, that the NRA is either selling or giving my address to other companies.

See, as far as I know, I've only made that typo one time, so now when I get mail addressed to me with that comma on the end, I know it has to go back to the NRA registration process. And there has been a lot of mail lately to that version of my address. At least a dozen magazine offers, a handful of insurance companies, credit card offers, you name it.

Is this a big deal? Probably not. I'm probably making way too big an issue about it, but it bugs me. As far as I can tell, the NRA never asked my permission to sell my name and address. They obviously aren't blind to the issue - they did ask permission to sell my e-mail address, which I denied, naturally - who needs more spam? So what's the difference in selling my snail-mail address? Is it just that no one has made a stink about this particular revenue source yet?
 
Call them and tell them you'd like to be removed from the solicitation list. I did this a few years ago and their 'spam' mail went to zero.
 
go ahead and try to e-mail me something...oops, I never gave it to THR, nor anyone else

when I first got internet, I had a hard core computer geek tell me all the stuff they could do if you ever put your SSN, e-mail, bank account, etc over the internet

IMO, you're a total idiot if you put any of this stuff over the i-net anymore than you absolutely have to. You'd better figure that anyone in the world can read whatever you're typing, because it's true
 
Call and email, gives you a record.
It doesn't seem like I got more junk mail than usual when I first joined the NRA.
 
Interesting, sure sounds like that is what happened. But I do know that I have not gotten any more junk mail than normal in the last year or so, which is actually very little.
 
I placed a order with Palidan Press a few years and used my dog's name. I, my dog, got junk mail from EVERYONE including Jerry Fallwell. Guess it is a common practice.

Kevin
 
Cacique500 said:
Call them and tell them you'd like to be removed from the solicitation list.
Click to expand...
I'll definitely give them a call, now that I know it's what they're doing - but I shouldn't have to do that with the NRA, should I?
I mean, aren't we the good guys?
Doesn't that seem more like something our opponents would do?
Shouldn't "not selling out our member's info" be the default setting?
How about "respecting the privacy and dignity of our membership"?
How about just having the decency to ask me first?
 
Sometimes I wonder about the NRA.

You know what really gets me are the cleverly disguised ads for Claroxan in the back of First Freedom magazine. I know I have been searching for a supplement for improve my accuracy for quite some time now, this must be the answer :scrutiny: It is only a matter of time before they start trying to sell commemorative plates with renewal notices.
 
I'm Pretty Careful On the I-net, BUT...

...I'm somewhat surprised that the NRA would do this. No, they don't have my SSN or anything like that... and I'm a Life Member, do very little business with them on-line except occasionally the NRA Store. Changed my magazine subscription a year and a half ago from American Rifleman to 1st Freedom.

That doesn't seem to have affected the level of spam or junk e-mail I get. Nor my orders to NRA Store. I DO get an awful lot of snail mail about "issues" from Wayne LaPierre or Chris Cox, some of them legit, some of them, maybe overreactions (although, can't say that I have no doubt our Second Amendment rights are under assault from MANY different groups). I do certainly think the NRA is a kind of "last bastion" for us law-abiding gun owners; but, that said, IF they are doing the mailing-list selling, whether spam or junk snail mail, I'd contact them about it. Some of this stuff, even from them, I wonder about the use of our monetary resources: I've tried to go e-mail only, with little luck... I don't have that much cash flow, myself, and the snail mail mailings, use up a lot of resources: materials as well as money and postage. I LIKE to think they're a straight-up organization, and I'm a great supporter, but, again, like I said...

I don't think a lot of folks are "idiots" who are necessarily unfamiliar with some of the things that go on on the Net; but, I do think a lot of uninformed folks give out more information inadvertently than they really need to... In Card's case, it wasn't the "criticals", like SSN or birthdate or something, it was JUST a mailing addy. That with some entities can cause minor probs--i.e., increase in snail junk mail or spam--but, we loyal members, I think, generally would like to believe that NRA doesn't "do us" like this. Maybe we're wrong? Hmmm...

May check this out the next couple of weeks over on the NRA, ILA, and Store websites. Sounds like there's justification for the check.

All y'all take care and be safe.
Mick
 
carterbeauford... GOOD ONE, Bro!

Hee hee... in the seriousness of the thread, among us NRA members, that's a good one... it's almost disguised, too, almost not like an ad... "small print", if it's the one I'm thinking of!

Hey, though, GI45 Springer... that's the next one I'm adding to my "stable". Off topic, but, good luck! I found mine in VA, couldn't get one locally for two years like I wanted (full size 5", OD Green finish... yeah, I know, but, I want to try the Armor Kote polymer: have Springer ss and Parked [or did have], like the concept of it, with one polymer refinished non-Springer/non-1911A1 .45).

Y'all all take care and be safe.
Mick
 
I am personally very surprised that they did not change your address automatically to what the USPS uses (123 Example ST. instead of 123 Example St,). When I first started buying from Sportsmans Guide (who also sells addresses by the bushel), they corrected the address from what I gave them, because of a slight imperfection (I typed my zip wrong).

I really don't get much junk mail, and very little of it is from the NRA (I get their credit card offers monthly, and a video offer every two weeks, and perpetual renewal mesages 7 months early).
 
I used to subscribe to various catalogs using really wacky names just to see who was selling me out, and who was buying.

It was pretty funny, and I did business with the ones who didn't.
 
I'm a life member

I don't get any phone calls, junk mail or anything like that.

What I do get is the satisfaction of San Francisco
being told to shut up.

we need a smilie for gloating.

The NRA is the greatest civil rights org ever!
 
If I give an address I put something in the business line to let me know who they are. They got wise so I now fudge things in different ways.

The phone company: Guilty
Cable: Guilty
Electric: Never did
Magazines of various sorts: Guilty

The biggest junk mailer will be the local large newspaper. All you have to do is track down that bulk mail permit number and see.
 
Popular Science sucks

Popular Science sucks.

However, I signed up in my usual manner, which is:
Ken P. S. (Lastname) for popular science

I'll see how much spam snail-mail I get to the fictional Ken P. S.

I tried a free trial and I am not going to pay for this Liberal rag.
 
I'll definitely give them a call, now that I know it's what they're doing - but I shouldn't have to do that with the NRA, should I?
I mean, aren't we the good guys?
Click to expand...


Don't fool yourself, my friend. The NRA, like all political organizations, is a money whore. Anything for a buck. If they can make an extra cent by selling your address, they'll sell it anyone in town.
 
I signed a friend up for a gift membership. I wasn't sure if he wanted to be associated with the NRA, so I deliberately misspelled his first and last names, so he could honestly say he wasn't a member. I will have to ask him if he gets spam mail with those names. One funny thing, he stated using the last name himself on the internet, it was a good pun on his real name.
 
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