Thread: customer tracking on reply envelope

apologize if this was asked and answered, a search came up with nothing.

I have noticed lately that reply envelopes for credit card offers have a "customer tracking code" and they often say "Warning: Unauthorized use or tampering with envelope or its contents is strictly prohibited."

Are these tracking codes tied to my information? Could someone take this code and somehow open a credit account if they found it in the trash? I have been shredding them lately.

If you think I am nuts, look at one of the 3 or 4 offers you get daily, I am sure one of them will have it. It is on the back of the reply envelope.

Thanks,
Eric

Its not paranoia, why do you think one of the major reasons why people want to opt out is to prevent fraudulent accounts being opened in their name.

Look at Johnson v. MBNA, all MBNA needed to claim that the account was Johnson's was her name and address.

That's it.

Now, if the company gets your name and address from the CRA, and that is all that they need to verify that the account is allegedly yours, the person who steals the 'pre-approved' credit application could provide an OBVIOUSLY BOGUS, 123-45-6789 SSN, and it would still be verifiable as being your account; because the creditor believes that they've conducted a reasonable investigation as long as only two of the four match.

Is this actually a unique "customer tracking code" or is it printed with the other printing on the envelope? Is it just pompous advertising fluff, like "I accept" stickers? The "no tampering" message is boilerplate with no meaning beyond existing applicable postal law.

This is usually a "typed" sequence like (just typing random numbers).
376734536347-36376376-235636-34647363

And usually the same sequence or a portion of it could be typed on the 'pre-approval' form.

The idea is that they could scan just the outside of the envelope, and pull up the PRM information associated with that tracking code.