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Reader question:
Are you concerned with putting out personal information, to get free things. Many of my friends do enter all the contests and free giveaways, but I hate giving all my personal info, such as email, phone number and address in order to receive something in the mail.
Great question! After all it’s not worth getting a small sample for free if someone gets into your private accounts or steals your identity.
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So to begin here’s the information that these freebies usually ask for in order to receive them:
- Name
- Birthday (occasionally)
- Address (to ship the free sample to)
- Email address – You probably will start getting some emails, so if you can have a junk email address and use that for the freebies instead of your regular email address, it can really help.
- Male/female (occasionally)
- Questions regarding the product (occasionally). This could be questions about what brand you use, where you buy the products etc…
- Phone # - I have only received a call once after signing up for a freebie.
- Facebook/tweets/texting - If you don’t have facebook you’ll miss out on a lot of freebies. I don’t tweet (I’m not a bird….well I kinda am because my maiden name is Crane, but I don’t really think cranes “tweet”)….anyways because I don’t have a twitter account, I occasionally miss out on freebies and I have never texted for a freebie either.
Precautions:
- Use your brain, if they’re asking for your credit card number, bank account, social security number or anything else suspicious then just skip the freebie.
- Look for freebies from trustworthy sites (like Money Saving Mom).
- Use fake information. Some people may feel like this is a gray area and lying, but if you’re okay with it you can simply use a made-up name or something. The only thing you can’t really fake is your mailing address or you’ll never get the samples!
- Like I mentioned above, have a junk email address.
I just found where someone asked Money Saving Mom the exact same question! Go here to see her answer.
