Junk mail
Some suggestions for reducing and eliminating junk mail, and for increasing junk mailers' costs to reduce the nationwide incidence of junk mail for everyone. Note that all of the suggestions below are free except for three, and I include an offer to pay your costs for two of those three.
Join the Do Not Call List free on-line via donotcall.gov; this list is operated by the Federal government and in my experience is over 95% effective at preventing calls from for-profit entities with which you have no prior business relationship. (Most such calls are prohibited by law once you are on the list.) OK, so that one is about telemarketing rather than junk mail, but you can use the time you save not answering telemarketing calls to pursue getting off of junk mailers' lists.
Opt out of all credit card offers by telling credit bureaus not to give information about you in connection with transactions you did not iniatiate (you can still get credit if you ask for it; you just won't get offers in the mail) for free at optoutprescreen.com or for free by phone at (888)5-OPT-OUT. This is a legitimate service of major commercial credit bureaus and is endorsed by mainstream privacy advocacy organizations -- and it worked promptly and completely for me. (This is also useful for sharply reducing the risk of someone else fraudulently applying for credit in your name.)
Subscribe to the "Mail Preference Service". Read about it at DMA's web site, but please don't pay the DMA to list you in the MPS; instead, sign up by mail by sending a postcard with your name, address, and signature to Mail Preference Service, Direct Marketing Association, PO Box 643, Carmel, NY 10512.
If you want to subscribe to the MPS and don't want to pay the postcard postage, I will personally pay for your stamp (offer limited at this time to first 500 MPS registrants only) because I hate junk mail that much and want to make a contribution to reducing it. If you have to buy a postcard, I will pay for the postcard. (I would also be interested in getting some postcards pre-printed with the MPS mailing address and lines for people to write in their own names and addresses, and then pre-stamping these and handing them out at some kind of fair, festival, or conference. If anyone is interested in doing this with me, let me know.)
A prolific junk mailer who does not use the MPS is ADVO, Inc. I find them especially obnoxious because they use a relationship with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as cover for their wasteful junk mailing activities, and they twice ignored my request to stop receiving their mail. But, if you receive their frequent junk mail flyers, you can still sign up with them at their web page and hope that it makes a difference.
File prohibitory orders against junk mailers; you just need to complete USPS form 1500 and take it to your post office with the junk mail. The post office has no right to review and no discretion to disagree with your characterization of junk mail (or the products it advertises) as "erotically arousing and/or sexually provocative" and there is no filing fee. It will be illegal for that junk mailer to mail you again after the prohibitory order issues. (Thanks, Chris.)
Bounce junk mail. If junk mail bears the text "FIRST CLASS POSTAGE PAID" or has a regular first class stamp, write on it "Remove me from your list -- Return to sender" or "Refused -- Return to sender"; then cross out your address (lightly) and drop the junk mail in any mailbox. If it does not say "FIRST CLASS POSTAGE PAID", you also need to affix a first-class stamp to get the post office to carry it back (because return service is not included in "standard mail" postage, unless the junk mailer wrote something specific about return service or return postage). Doing either of these things is preferable to simply throwing it out or recycling it in your home, since it will make the junk mailer pay the costs of disposing of the junk mailer's own mail -- and junk mailers, not you, should be paying to dispose of their junk.
Send blank Business Reply Mail postcards back to junk mailers. If you open junk mail (intentionally or unintentionally), you will often find Business Reply Mail cards or envelopes inside. You should always use these -- but not to buy what the junk mailers are selling! The junk mailers will have to pay the return postage. Either write "REMOVE ME FROM YOUR LIST" and your address on the back, or simply write "STOP SENDING JUNK MAIL". Please do not do this with Business Reply Mail cards sent by mailers other than junk mailers, since Business Reply Mail has many completely legitimate uses.
Write to Azeezaly S. Jaffer, Vice President of Public Affairs for the Postal Service, and tell him to stop trying to get the news media to call junk mail something other than junk mail. You should be able to reach him at United States Postal Service, 475 L'Enfant Plaza, SW, Washington, D.C. 20260, ATTN: Azeezaly S. Jaffer. I will also be happy to pay for your stamp if you write to Mr. Jaffer.
