Opt Out of Prescreen: How to Stop Prescreened Credit Card Offers, and Is It Legit
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The short answer
To opt out of prescreened credit card and insurance offers, go to optoutprescreen.com or call 1-888-5-OPT-OUT (1-888-567-8688). Both are free, take about three minutes, and stop the offers for five years. A permanent opt-out needs a signed form sent by mail. The site is legitimate: it is the official opt-out required under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and run jointly by Equifax, Experian, TransUnion and Innovis. Requests are processed within five business days, though offers already in the mail can keep arriving for up to 60 days.
Last updated 17 August 2026. OptOutPrescreen.com refuses connections from outside the United States, so the flow below is corroborated against FTC consumer guidance, Experian's own opt-out FAQ and state attorney general guidance rather than read off the site.
The three ways to opt out of prescreened offers
They are not interchangeable, and the difference that matters is how long the opt-out lasts. Two of these give you five years. Only one is permanent, and it is the one that cannot be finished in a browser.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| Route | Lasts | Asks for | Cost | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Online at optoutprescreen.com | Five years | Name, address, Social Security number and date of birth | Free | The fastest route. The site only accepts connections from US internet providers, so it fails from abroad or behind a VPN. |
| Phone, 1-888-5-OPT-OUT (1-888-567-8688) | Five years | The same details, read out to an automated line | Free | Useful if you would rather not type a Social Security number into a web form. Same effect as the online route. |
| Permanent Opt-Out Election form, by mail | Permanent | The same details plus a physical signature | Free, minus a stamp | You start it online or by phone, then print, sign and mail the form. The signature is why this one cannot be done entirely online. |
| Do nothing | Not applicable | Nothing | Free | The bureaus keep renting your name to lenders and insurers for firm offers, and the mail keeps arriving. |
One opt-out covers all four bureaus. You do not file separately with Equifax, Experian, TransUnion and Innovis, which is the whole reason the joint site exists. If you have moved recently, file again from the new address, because the lists are keyed to an address as much as to a name.
The question almost everybody searches first
Is OptOutPrescreen.com legit, or is it a scam collecting Social Security numbers?
Why it looks suspicious
A plain website you have never heard of asks for your name, address, date of birth and Social Security number, promises nothing in return, and looks like it was designed in 2003. Every instinct a careful person has says close the tab.
The instinct is right in general and wrong here. The dated design is what compliance infrastructure looks like when four competitors are forced by statute to operate something jointly and nobody owns the budget for a redesign.
Why it is the real thing
The opt-out exists because the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires it. The site and the 1-888-5-OPT-OUT line are run cooperatively by Equifax, Experian, TransUnion and Innovis, the four nationwide consumer reporting companies.
The FTC points consumers to it in its own guidance on prescreened offers, the CFPB does the same, and each of the four bureaus links to it from its own website. The Social Security number is not new information: it is the field that keys your credit file, and all four companies already have it.
The one real risk is typing the address wrong. Only optoutprescreen.com is the genuine site. Lookalike domains with extra words or different endings are not run by the bureaus and should not get your details.
How to opt out of prescreen, step by step
Three minutes for the five-year version. Step one is the decision people skip, and step six is where the job turns out to be only half done.
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Step 1
Decide between five years and permanent before you start
The online and phone routes both give you five years and take about three minutes. A permanent opt-out needs a signed paper form in the mail, so it takes a week or so of calendar time and roughly the same three minutes of your time. Most people want permanent and settle for five years because they did not know the difference existed. Pick deliberately, because reversing either one is easy and forgetting to renew in 2031 is not.
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Step 2
Go to optoutprescreen.com from a US connection
Turn off any VPN first. The site refuses to load from outside the United States and its territories, and it does not explain that it is a location block, so a VPN exit node in another country produces a page that looks like an outage. If you searched because the site seemed down, this is almost always why. The phone line has no such restriction.
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Step 3
Enter your name, address, Social Security number and date of birth
This is the step people stall on, and it is worth understanding rather than guessing. The four bureaus already hold your Social Security number, because it is how a credit file is keyed. The number is not new information you are handing over, it is the identifier that lets them find the right file and take you off the list. Experian, one of the four operators, states that the request needs your name, Social Security number and date of birth. Independent reviewers report being able to submit without those two fields. If you would rather not type it, use the phone line.
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Step 4
Confirm the request and keep the acknowledgement
The online route returns a confirmation on screen. Save it, screenshot it, or note the date, because there is no dashboard to log back into and no account to check. If you are mailing the permanent form, keep a copy of what you signed and the date you posted it. The acknowledgement is the only record you will have that the request was made.
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Step 5
For a permanent opt-out, print, sign and mail the form
Guidance from state attorneys general gives the mailing address as P.O. Box 530200, Atlanta, GA 30353. Use the address printed on the form you generate rather than one copied off any website, including this one, because a returned envelope is a silent failure you will not notice for months.
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Step 6
Give it up to 60 days, then deal with the other half of the problem
Opt-out requests have to be processed within five business days, but offers already sitting in a mail house queue keep arriving for a while after that. The FTC puts the outside figure at 60 days. Once the mail stops, you have solved firm offers of credit and nothing else: your address is still published on people-search sites, and that is a separate job.
What the opt-out does not reach
Prescreen is one pipe out of the credit bureaus. Credit header data is the other one.
A credit file has two layers. The financial layer is your accounts, balances and payment history, and it is tightly regulated: somebody needs a permissible purpose under the Fair Credit Reporting Act to see it. Wrapped around that is the identifying layer, known in the industry as the credit header: your name, your aliases, current and former addresses, phone numbers, date of birth and Social Security number.
The prescreen opt-out governs what happens on the financial layer. It tells the bureaus to stop including you in the lists they compile for lenders and insurers who want to send firm offers. That is genuinely worth doing, and it is all it does.
The header layer has historically been treated as something other than a consumer report, which is why it can be sold for purposes the FCRA never contemplated: marketing, fraud scoring, skip tracing, and the people-search sites that publish your address next to your age and your relatives. Consumer advocates have called it the credit header loophole for two decades.
It nearly closed. In December 2024 the CFPB proposed a rule that would have treated the sale of those identifiers as a consumer report, bringing much of the data broker industry under the FCRA. The Bureau withdrew the proposal in May 2025, saying rulemaking was not necessary or appropriate at that time. The loophole is still open in 2026.
So the practical position after you opt out of prescreen is this. The preapproved envelopes stop. Your address, your phone number and your relatives' names stay published on dozens of people-search sites, reachable by anyone who types your name into Google, and no federal opt-out covers them. Those come off one site at a time, which is the job the data broker opt-out list walks through, or continuously, which is what a data removal service is for.
Which opt-out stops which thing
Four different opt-outs get confused with each other constantly. Prescreen handles firm offers of credit and insurance. DMAchoice handles general advertising mail, for a fee and only from companies that choose to participate. The National Do Not Call Registry handles telemarketing. None of them touch the people-search sites.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| Stops this | Prescreen opt-out | DMAchoice | Do Not Call | Broker opt-outs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Preapproved credit card offers in the mail | Yes | No | No | No |
| Preapproved insurance offers in the mail | Yes | No | No | No |
| General advertising mail and catalogs | No | Yes | No | No |
| Telemarketing calls | No | No | Yes | No |
| Your address on people-search sites | No | No | No | Yes |
| Your phone number on people-search sites | No | No | No | Yes |
| Credit header data sold to data brokers | No | No | No | Partly |
| Cost | Free | Free or a few dollars | Free | Free by hand, or $40 to $250 a year |
| How long it lasts | Five years or permanent | Around ten years | Permanent | Until the listing is rebuilt |
Opt out prescreen for businesses: the notice you have to include
If you are on the sending side rather than the receiving side, the obligation runs the other way. Any firm offer of credit or insurance based on a prescreened list has to carry an opt-out notice, and the FTC's Prescreen Opt-Out Notice Rule prescribes its format rather than leaving it to your designer.
There are two notices. A short notice goes on the first page of the offer, set apart from the rest of the text and in a type size that makes it readable at a glance, telling the recipient they can stop receiving these and where to go. A longer notice appears elsewhere in the mailing and explains why they received the offer, that the information came from a consumer reporting agency, and how to exercise the opt-out.
The FTC has brought enforcement actions over notices that were technically present but buried, so a compliant notice is a formatting question, not just a wording question. This page is not legal advice, and the rule text is the thing to work from.
Frequently asked questions
Is opt out prescreen a legitimate website?
Yes. OptOutPrescreen.com is the official opt-out site required under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, operated jointly by the four nationwide consumer reporting companies: Equifax, Experian, TransUnion and Innovis. The FTC and the CFPB both point consumers to it, and all four bureaus link to it from their own sites. It is free, and the only correct address is optoutprescreen.com.
What is opt out prescreen?
It is the single opt-out that removes you from the prescreened marketing lists the credit bureaus sell to lenders and insurers. Those lists are how you end up with preapproved credit card offers you never asked for. Opting out tells all four bureaus to stop including you in firm offer lists, either for five years or permanently.
Should I opt out of prescreened credit offers?
For most people, yes. The offers are a mild identity-theft risk, since a preapproved application pulled out of your mail or your trash is a working credit application with your name on it. The cost of opting out is that you stop seeing targeted card and insurance promotions, which matters only if you shop for cards by mail. You can opt back in later at the same site.
Is opt out prescreen free?
Yes, completely. The online route, the phone line and the permanent mail-in form all cost nothing beyond a stamp for the permanent option. There is no paid tier and no upsell. Any site charging a fee to submit a prescreen opt-out on your behalf is charging you for a three-minute form you can file yourself.
Why is opt out prescreen down?
Usually because of where you are connecting from rather than an outage. OptOutPrescreen.com only accepts traffic from internet providers inside the United States and its territories, and a VPN, a corporate proxy or a trip abroad all trip that block. The error it returns looks like a broken site. Disconnect the VPN, or call 1-888-5-OPT-OUT instead.
Does opting out of prescreened offers hurt your credit score?
No. The lookups lenders run to build prescreened lists are soft inquiries, and Experian states directly that the inquiry type used to make firm offers of credit or insurance is not used in calculating credit scores. Opting out removes you from a marketing list. It does not touch your credit file, your accounts or your score.
Do I have to give my Social Security number to opt out of prescreen?
Sources disagree, and it is worth knowing that before you decide. Experian, one of the four companies running the service, says the request requires your name, Social Security number and date of birth. Independent reviewers report submitting successfully with those fields left blank. The bureaus already hold your Social Security number, so it is an identifier rather than a disclosure, but if you would rather not type it into a web form, use the phone line.
How long does it take to stop receiving prescreened offers of credit?
Your request has to be processed within five business days. The mail takes longer to dry up, because offers already in production keep arriving, and the FTC puts the outside figure at around 60 days. If preapproved offers are still landing three months later, they are coming from a lender you already do business with, which the prescreen opt-out does not cover.
What is the difference between opting out for five years and permanently?
Five years is what you get online or by phone, and it expires quietly on its own. Permanent requires a signed Permanent Opt-Out Election form sent by mail, because a physical signature is the point. Both stop the same lists. The only real difference is whether you have to remember to do this again in five years.
Does opting out of prescreen remove me from data brokers?
No, and this is the most common misunderstanding about it. The prescreen opt-out stops the bureaus renting your name for firm offers. It does nothing about credit header data, the identifying layer of your credit file, which flows separately to skip tracers and people-search sites. Your address stays published. Removing it means filing opt-outs at the sites themselves, starting with the data broker opt-out list.
What is a prescreen and opt out notice?
It is the disclosure every prescreened offer has to carry by law. The FTC's Prescreen Opt-Out Notice Rule requires a short notice on the first page of the offer, in a type size that stands out, plus a longer notice elsewhere in the mailing explaining why you received it and how to opt out. If you send prescreened offers, both notices are mandatory and their formatting is prescribed.
Can I opt back in to prescreened offers?
Yes. The same site and the same phone line handle opting back in, and people do it deliberately when they are shopping for a new card and want the targeted sign-up bonuses that arrive by mail. If you opted out permanently, opting back in is the same kind of request in the other direction.
Once the mail stops, the listings are still there
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