First and foremost, NEVER EVER give your social security number or date of birth out to anyone you're not looking at face to face and know fully. While, I know GardenParty people are savvy enough to know this, someone else reading it might fall prey. Secondly, most of this stuff is urban legend. But more importantly, the link tells you the true way to get rid callers and mail, the right way. Excerpt from the link: "Returning junk mail to direct mailers on their dime (by stuffing it back into their postage-paid return envelopes) may cost them some money and provide you with a bit of personal satisfaction, but it won't cut down on the amount of junk mail you receive. In fact, it may actually increase your junk mail load, since the primary metric used to gauge the effectiveness of many direct mail campaigns is the number of responses received (even if those responses are negative). The best way to decrease the amount of unsolicited mail you receive is to register with the Direct Marketing Association's (DMA) Mail Preference Service (MPS). The DMA maintains a "do not mail" file of MPS registrants which they regularly update and send to their members, who are required to remove the listed entries from their rosters of prospective customers targeted for mailings. (The file is also made available to non-DMA members, but they are under no obligation to use it.)" Here is a link that might be useful: Urban legend

How to check email with the Mac Mail client http://genepath.med.harvard.edu/compfac/MacMail.htm

Here's some more info about who may be getting a check, and why. Hope you're included! We're not, alas. But I guess that means our insurance has been doing its job all along. But in many states, (not NY, where I live) there have been almost no controls on insurance companies, so that's why others are getting money back. May I point out that this is a part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare? The insurance companies were waiting to hear if the Supreme Court ruled that the PPACA was constitutional, but now they have to get busy and send refund checks in cases where they weren't meeting the new standards that require insurance companies to actually spend most of the premiums on medical care, not advertising, bonuses and bloated executive salaries. What a novel concept! Sending the checks in junk mail is a really creative way to keep the money. L. Here is a link that might be useful: Are you getting a refund? What you need to know.

*groan* ;) Well, at least I'm not a "Jack" ---------------------- Although I do wonder about some mail items I have been getting for the past 8 month, or so. Not often, but it is curious. The address is ours, but the names are not--and they are not of anyone that has ever lived at this address. Sometimes they are names of neighbors down the street (although I don't personally know them), or from other streets in our neighborhood. Thought maybe they just didn't want to give out their real address and gave fake numbers and used street names that were familiar. But it is not always the usual junk mail--they are service coupons from car dealerships, the type sent to recent customers. The last one was Rx discount cards, that have to be requested. Why request Rx cards and send them to an address that is not your own? Weird.