Your mailbox fills with “preapproved” card offers because the credit bureaus sell your name to lenders, and FCRA § 604(c), 15 U.S.C. § 1681b(c) lets them do it without asking you. You can stop most of it for free by calling 1-888-5-OPT-OUT (1-888-567-8688) or going to OptOutPrescreen.com, which lasts five years, or by mailing the signed Permanent Opt-Out Election form, which makes it permanent.
In exchange for those list sales, § 615(d) requires every prescreened offer to print your opt-out right and the toll-free number. Opting out quiets the mailbox. It leaves the file those lists are cut from exactly as it is.
What do the terms on a prescreened offer mean?
A prescreened offer is a card or insurance offer mailed to you because a bureau sold your name to a lender who never heard from you. The fine print uses a handful of terms, and once you know them the mailer is easy to read. Prescreening runs on soft inquiries that never lower a score, and one opt-out request reaches every nationwide bureau at once.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Prescreened offer | Credit or insurance offer sent because your file matched a lender’s list |
| Firm offer | A real but conditional offer the lender can still verify |
| Promotional inquiry | The soft inquiry a prescreen leaves; lenders never see it |
| OptOutPrescreen.com | The official opt-out site run by Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, Innovis |
| Permanent Opt-Out Election | The signed paper form that makes your opt-out permanent |
| Credit freeze | A lock at each bureau that blocks new accounts and prescreen lists |
Why do you receive prescreened credit card offers?
Lenders buy lists from the bureaus of people whose files meet preset criteria, such as a score range or a clean recent history. Then they mail those people “firm offers” of credit or insurance. You never applied. The bureau sold your eligibility data.
The criteria can be broad or narrow. A card issuer might ask for everyone in a state above a score threshold with no recent late payments. An auto lender might target people whose loans are near payoff. The bureau screens its database and sells the matching names and addresses.
The offers are a major bureau revenue line, which is why the system is opt-out and never opt-in. Congress balanced that by writing the opt-out rules into the FCRA. The current setup dates to the 1996 amendments that formalized the five-year and permanent elections.
Are prescreened offers the result of a hard inquiry?
No. Prescreening creates a soft inquiry, which can show up on your own copy of the report as a promotional inquiry. Soft inquiries are invisible to lenders and never affect a score under any FICO or VantageScore model. Only an application you send in response to the offer creates a hard inquiry.
Is prescreening legal under the FCRA?
Yes. Section 1681b(c) creates a specific permissible purpose for deals you did not start, and it is limited to firm offers of credit or insurance. The bureau may release only limited list data. It may not hand over your full report.
A firm offer is a real commitment, with conditions. The lender can still verify income or run a full report when you respond. It can also withdraw the offer if your file no longer meets the original criteria.
That is why a “preapproved” mailer sometimes ends in a denial. The prescreen match happened weeks earlier against a snapshot of your file. The real application gets judged against the file as it stands on the day you respond.
How do you opt out of prescreened offers by phone or online?
One free request reaches Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, and Innovis through the system the four bureaus run jointly, as the FTC’s consumer guidance describes. You do not need to contact each bureau. The phone number is the same one printed on every prescreened offer, so you can check it against any mailer in your hand before you call.
- Call. Dial 1-888-5-OPT-OUT (1-888-567-8688), an automated line, for the five-year opt-out.
- Or go online. Fill out the request at OptOutPrescreen.com, the official site, for the same five-year term.
- Have your details ready. The line and the site ask for your name, phone number, Social Security number, and date of birth, so the request can be matched to your file.
- Go permanent if you want it. Start online, then print, sign, and mail the Permanent Opt-Out Election form.
- Give it time. Requests process within about five business days, and offers already in the pipeline can keep arriving for several more weeks.
What is the difference between the five-year and permanent opt-out?
Length is the only difference. Both take you off prescreen lists at all four nationwide bureaus. The permanent option needs a signature on paper because it stays in place until you file a new opt-in request.
| Option | How long it lasts | How to request |
|---|---|---|
| Phone opt-out | 5 years | Call 1-888-567-8688 |
| Online opt-out | 5 years | OptOutPrescreen.com |
| Permanent opt-out | Permanent | Sign and mail the election form |
| Credit freeze | Until you lift it | Placed at each bureau; frozen files are left off prescreen lists |
Does opting out affect your credit score or future applications?
No. Opting out is not recorded as a scoring event, lenders cannot see it, and it has no effect on any application you send. Lenders judge an application you start the same way whether you opted out or not.
A denial works the same after opting out as before: the inquiry counts, the denial does not.
Does opting out reduce identity theft risk?
Yes, against one specific attack: preapproved offers stolen from mailboxes or trash and sent back by a fraudster with a changed address. The FTC recommends the opt-out as part of basic identity-theft hygiene. The problem is big, with more than 1.1 million identity theft reports filed through IdentityTheft.gov in 2024 (FTC, 2025).
The attack works because a stolen offer arrives with your name, your address, and an invitation code attached. A fraudster who responds and sends the card to a new address gets an account you only find out about when the bill or the collection notice shows up.
That account then sits on your report as someone else’s debt. In the twelve months from July 2025 through June 2026, 3,482,718 complaints under “Incorrect information on your report” were recorded in the CFPB’s public Consumer Complaint Database, and in our own read of that database, 66.9% of them said the information belongs to someone else. Those complaints are unverified consumer allegations, and the CFPB does not confirm the facts in them.
A credit freeze is still the stronger control. It blocks new accounts outright, where the opt-out only cuts the mail, and a freeze also takes your file off prescreen lists.
What marketing does the prescreen opt-out not stop?
The opt-out only takes you off lists the bureaus sell for prescreening. It covers nothing else, and other channels keep going the same as before. Plan on these to keep arriving:
- Your own banks and card issuers. Companies you already have accounts with can keep sending offers by mail and email.
- Data-broker mail. Marketing built from purchase histories, warranty cards, and other non-bureau sources is unaffected.
- Email and phone marketing. These run under separate rules, such as the Do Not Call registry.
- Mail addressed to “resident.” Generic credit or insurance offers never used your file, so the opt-out cannot reach them.
General advertising mail has its own opt-out list, DMAchoice, which the advertising industry runs. If you want a quiet mailbox, you usually need both sign-ups, since the two systems use completely separate lists.
Are prescreened offers ever worth keeping?
Sometimes, if you are actively shopping for credit. Prescreened terms can beat the public version of the same card, and that gap matters when cards are this expensive: the average APR on new general-purpose card accounts opened in 2024 was 27.5% (CFPB, 2025). Here is what an offer gives you and what it costs you.
- Better terms than the ad. A prescreened rate or bonus is sometimes better than what the issuer advertises publicly.
- A real commitment. A firm offer means the lender already pre-sorted you, though it can still verify and withdraw.
- No score hit to receive it. Getting the mailer leaves only a soft inquiry.
- Mail theft exposure. Every offer in the box is a ready-made application for a thief.
- A snapshot that goes stale. The match used an old copy of your file, so “preapproved” can still end in a denial.
If you are not shopping for credit this year, the permanent opt-out is the better default. You can always opt back in when you are ready to compare.
Skip the paperwork. Lock in your spot.
CreditRefresh drafts your FCRA dispute letter and tracks the 30-day investigation window. You review, approve, and send. You stay in control.
Lock in your spotCan you opt back in to prescreened offers?
Yes. The same phone number and website handle opt-in requests and put you back on prescreen lists. Some people opt back in for a short while before rate shopping, so they can see competing card and loan offers.
What are the tradeoffs of opting out?
Opting out cuts clutter and mail theft risk. The cost is losing sight of offers you might not otherwise see, since prescreened terms are sometimes better than the advertised versions. With the average commercial-bank card account charging 20.94% interest (Federal Reserve, 2026), that view is worth something when you are about to borrow.
You can have the quiet mailbox and still see the market. Pair a permanent opt-out with planned rate shopping through prequalification tools, which use soft inquiries and which you start yourself.
Read those tools closely before you apply, because an estimate is not an approval. Eduardo F, in a 1-star Trustpilot review of Credit Karma on September 14, 2026, wrote: “Credit Karma gets people to apply for loans or credit cards with outstanding approval odds which I believe to be a complete lie. So they make me hurt your credit score with hard inquiries, when in actuality you have 0 approval odds, not outstanding.”
Does opting out fix errors already on your credit report?
No. The opt-out changes who can buy your name, and every account, balance, and status on your file stays where it was. In the FTC’s national accuracy study, the sixth and final one Congress mandated, one in five consumers had an error on at least one of their three credit reports (FTC, 2013).
Fixing those takes a dispute. Under the FCRA, a bureau that gets your dispute must run a reasonable reinvestigation, generally within 30 days, and must correct or delete what it cannot verify (Fair Credit Reporting Act, 1970). You can dispute items that are inaccurate, incomplete, unverifiable, or too old to report. Most negative items age off after seven years, and a Chapter 7 bankruptcy after ten (Fair Credit Reporting Act, 1970).
People are filing. Credit or consumer reporting made up 88% of all complaints sent to the CFPB in 2025 (CFPB, 2026). The right has been law since 1970. Knowing which items to dispute and what to write is the hard part.
Who should handle the errors a quiet mailbox leaves behind?
Opting out takes care of the mail for free, so the only choice left that costs money is who reads the report behind the offers and disputes what looks wrong. Here is how the options compare on price, on what each one does about those errors, and on how many bureaus it reaches.
| Tool | What you pay | What that buys | Bureaus | Trustpilot |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CreditRefresh | $49.99/mo, no setup fee, cancel anytime. Mail letters yourself free, or pay RushMail per letter | Scans all three reports and drafts FCRA letters you sign first | All three | 4.3 (9 reviews) |
| Dispute Beast | From $49.99/mo for required monitoring. Mail letters yourself free, or pay Sprint Mail per letter | AI dispute letters bundled with Dispute Beast’s required paid monitoring | All three | 4.2 (2,067 reviews) |
| DisputeBee | $49/mo personal, $129/mo business | Letter templates you print, mail, and track yourself | All three | 3.2 (68 reviews) |
| The Credit People | $99/mo standard, $119/mo premium, or $599 for 6 months | A done-for-you service; you do not approve each letter | All three | 1.7 (17 reviews) |
| Lexington Law | $139.95/mo, invoiced at the end of each service period | A law firm works your items; individual letters are not shown | All three | 3.2 (624 reviews) |
| Credit Karma | Free, paid for by lender referrals | Free monitoring plus lender offers; Direct Dispute reaches TransUnion only | TransUnion | 1.1 (912 reviews) |
Every price is that company’s own published rate, read off that company’s own site on September 15, 2026. Trustpilot scores and review counts as published on September 24, 2026.
How CreditRefresh Turns a Three-Bureau Scan Into Signed FCRA Dispute Letters
Opting out stops lenders from buying your name, and it leaves any errors on your file exactly where they were. In CreditRefresh’s September 18, 2026 member-data extract, 2.3% of disputed bureau-level items in mailed rounds had a recorded outcome. Within that subset, 47.9% were no longer reported on a newer pull of the same bureau, while 52.1% remained reported with a changed balance, status or negative flag.
Here is how we get there. CreditRefresh pulls your Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion reports and flags items that look inaccurate, incomplete, unverifiable, or too old to report. It drafts a print-ready FCRA letter for each one you choose to challenge, and nothing goes out until you review and sign it. You mail the round yourself, or hand it to RushMail for a small per-letter fee.
It comes with Refresh Monitoring at a flat $49.99 a month. There is no setup fee, no per-dispute charge, and no contract, and there is nothing to learn.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is OptOutPrescreen.com legitimate?
Yes. It is the official opt-out site run jointly by Equifax, Experian, Innovis, and TransUnion. FTC and CFPB consumer guidance point to it, and so do the notices printed on the offers themselves.
Does it cost anything to opt out of prescreened offers?
No. Both the phone line and the website are free. The only cost of the permanent option is a stamp for the signed form.
How long does it take for the offers to stop?
Requests process within about five business days. Campaigns already under way use older lists, so mail can keep coming for several weeks before it tapers off.
Do I have to opt out again after five years?
Yes, if you used the phone or online option. Once the five years run out, you go back on the lists, so either renew or mail the permanent form now.
Does a credit freeze stop prescreened offers?
Yes. A frozen file cannot be put on prescreen lists, so a freeze at all three bureaus stops the offers as a side effect while also blocking new-account fraud.
Should I opt out if my credit is already frozen?
It still helps. A freeze only keeps you off lists while it is in place, and the opt-out keeps you off them when you lift the freeze to apply for a loan.
Why do offers keep arriving after opting out?
The likeliest causes are mail that predates the opt-out, a sender you already bank with, or a list from a non-bureau data broker. Offers built from bureau prescreen lists must stop once the request processes.
Last reviewed: June 2026
This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. The Fair Credit Reporting Act and related regulations are complex, and outcomes depend on individual circumstances. Consumers with specific questions about their credit reports or rights under federal law should consult a licensed attorney or contact the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau directly.
CreditRefresh reads the file those prescreen lists are cut from and drafts an FCRA dispute for each item that looks wrong, which you sign before anything is mailed.
