1) New members are immediately entered in the Private Citizen Directory database and are sent initial membership materials.

2) Organizations that request updates of our do-not-call Directory receive our then-current membership list. Update requests are common, and many firms have made arrangements to receive regular updates. Telemarketers are unwilling to bother Private Citizen members, since we are a group that is notorious for causing financial damage to junk calling firms.

3) Aside from those outfits requesting updates, the Directory is published and 'mass-mailed' to more than 1,600 telemarketing related firms annually. Your do-not-call Notice & Offer will be published in the next 'mass-mailed' Private Citizen Directory, and wil contiue for one year subsequent to that mailing. Thus, your membership will last anywhere from 1 year to 'just-short-of' two years. But, the benefits accrued to your membership lasts longer... as explained below.

4) As a Private Citizen member, your unwillingness to be freely telemarketed is presented to telemarketers by means of a 'Notice & Offer' which implements two different legal mechanisms: contract law - and - statutory law, to protect your privacy.

Contract Law - concerning the 'Offer' we send to junk callers on your behalf.
 You define a telemarketing call as a call intending to solicit:
    a) anything  (sales - political support - charitable donations - survey information),
    b) you at your home or business,
 You offer junk callers the use of your:
     - property (telephone) and
     - service (answering their call)
    on a 'for hire' basis of $500 per incident.
Your offer 'officially' stands for 1 year from the date of the telemarketer's receipt of it. However, the resulting reduction of junk calls continues for approximately 2.5 years. This is due to the fact that it takes about that long (on average) to get back on many junk calling lists after being initially removed.

Statutory Law - concerning the 'Notice' we send to junk callers on your behalf.
 Your Notice contains a do-not-call request, made pursuant to
  the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (the TCPA).
    The TCPA provides the following regarding live solicitation calls:
      - it affects only calls to homes,
      - it affects only commercial calls intended to encourage sales
        (charitable / survey / political calls are not covered),
      - it 'allows' telemarketers to violate your do-not-call request once a year
        (the law strips you of the right to do anything about such 'yearly' violations),
      - if a junk caller (in violation of the law) calls twice within twelve months,
        then you can sue the calling firm ...
           BUT the law grants the violating firm an affirmative defense,
                   which junk callers implement by essentially saying;
                   "Your Honor, we made a mistake".
      - the law allows you to sue for 'up to'  $500, and allows,
      - if you can win the case, the law allows the judge to award you as little as $1.
      - your do-not-call request is 'good' for 10 years.
In our view, the TCPA should be known as the Telemarketing Callers Protection Act, because it protects telemarketers from law suits as a result of invading your privacy, to a much greater extent than it protects you from telemarketing intrusions.

As a Private Citizen member, you will learn about little known TCPA loopholes. These loopholes, and the Private Citizen 'Offer' you make to junk callers, have turned our members into the 'telemarketing industry's worst nightmare'.  Thus telemarketers avoid calling our members as if we were a telemarketing mine-field.

The above is not meant to be a full explanation of all positive ramifications collateral to being a Private Citizen member. For instance, there are conditions which allow Private Citizen members to collect substantially more than $500 pursuant to a single call based on an aspect of the 'Offer' presented in the Private Citizen Directory.

1) New members are immediately entered in the Private Citizen no-junk-mail database and receive initial membership materials.

2) Organizations that request Directory updates receive our then-current membership list.

3) The Private Citizen no-junk-mail database is published and sent to the eight junk mail related organization multiple times every year.  Members who elect to take advantage of this service will be included in the next published database. The eight organizations (who are recognized as the largest junk mail related firms in the nation) receive the following:
  - an actual copy of your signed no-junk-mail request
      (we will send you a form to sign and return to us for this purpose)
  - a hard-copy listing of names and addresses reflecting the above copies.
      (thus the industry will have an easy-to-use text version of your information)
  - a disk (in ASCII format) of the above mentioned list
  - a copy of a cover letter sent to the U.S. House of Representatives Postal Services Subcommittee. This cover letter accompanies an additional copy of the above material, which is also sent to the Subcommittee.

4) The initial no-junk-mail membership material mentioned above will include a form that we suggest you make multiple front/back copies of upon your receipt. Your use of this form will allow you to stop any junk mailer that offers anything for sale that you, in your sole discretion, consider to be offensive. The key phrase here is "your sole discretion". A federal law gives you the right to determine what is offensive and to you and to prohibit mailers of such material from mailing to you in the future

Thus, by use of this form, you will be able to discriminate between mail which may be considered "junk" by others, but that you wish to continue to receive. For instance, you may or may not wish to continue receiving catalogs from Eddie Bauer or Martha Stuart. This form will allow you to stop their mailings if you wish.

All that is required is that you fill out the easy-to-complete form, attach the mail from the junk mailer you wish to stop (you must open the envelope in which the junk mail came in), and drop the form and attached mail-piece off at the post office. The Postal Service must then issue a Prohibitory Order which will prevent that mailer from sending anything further to you.

5) The combination of our notifying the aforementioned junk mail organizations and your use of the form will reduce your commercial junk mail by up to 90% for 5 years.

6) Also, as a Private Citizen member, you will learn of little known ways to avoid additional junk mail and how to redirect your current junk mail to to those who 'should' receive it.