It's scary, because they have my name and address, and if they've pre-approved me, they must have a lot more than that. Am I safe to throw this away as junk mail?
Are these random banks allowed to run credit checks on me for no reason? Does their activity reflect poorly on my credit score, or in any way hinder my ability to obtain credit on my own later?
Here in the UK I do consider this to be junk mail, and I do throw it away, but I agree with you that its a little bit scary, because they know my details, and enough to make a call about my worthiness.
In fact - when I moved to the UK, several years ago, I found it difficult to get a credit card (understandably) and it was this 'junk mail' that prompted me to go to MY bank and apply for one - which was then granted.
It was scary how they knew I'm eligible before I did, or before my own bank thought of offering me a card.
Here in the UK, I don't think they are allowed to do anything that would affect the credit score, as they ought to warn you first if they did, but from my experience above they certainly don't just randomly send it to people.
I think the pre-approval thing is only partially true, I'm sure they still do the 'real' check if and when you apply.
In the United States, we have some options to get off these lists. You must provide these places your social security number (which is scary) but it is legit since in the US, your SSN is how they find you.
http://consumerist.com/2008/03/8-ways-to-opt-out-of-junk-mail-lists.html http://www.ehow.co.uk/how_5742830_stop-credit-card-offers-phone.html
Regarding your credit: they do a "soft pull" to verify if you have any credit, so they have pre-approved you, but if you actually sign up you authorize them to pull your credit for real. However until you authorize them to give you credit, their soft pulls do not affect your credit negatively.
I just got my credit reports in the US, and it listed all the soft pulls and noted they did not count against me.
Here is an opt out link for Canada
http://www.the-cma.org/public.asp?WCE=C=32|K=s224196
All I could find is a hint that you can pay to be on a list in the UK to avoid offers.
In the US you can ask the credit agencies to put a block on your credit report. This prevents the soft pulls that MrChrister mentioned. I did this a while ago and the volume of credit card offers went to almost none.
The other thing that helped was I stopped using credit cards and closed all my accounts. I guess credit card companies don't think you're a good candidate for credit cards if you don't have a credit card.
To add to Yossi Dahan's point about the banks pre-screening consider how and where they are obtaining the information. They may base their assumptions on the demographic of the mailing list they are buying. For example if they acquired the information from a telco and they telco sells the information based on whether you are belonging to a particular subscription group. I.e. are you a basic phone user? Do you have 1 extra feature? Or 3 additional features with a habit of regular long distance calls? That kind of information is very telling about a particular user's spending habits.
It is possible to tell where the information came from sometimes because certain companies will list a customer's address a certain way which then shows up that way on specific junk mail. In Ontario Canada it is well known that the MTO resells the driver's licence information. Also one of the major telecommunication companies does as well.
