How To Get Rid of Junk Mail

Postal junk mail has really started to annoy me recently. It seems like the volume of it has gone way up, to the point where I have an entire trashcan full every month. Not only is it annoying, but your personal information is being sold and traded all over the place, and when you throw away junk mail (unless you "sanitize" it), you are putting personal information out there for people to use for such things as identity theft. With that in mind, I decided to look into how to really get rid of junk mail, and found this website immediately- http://www.obviously.com/junkmail/ which has a lot of interesting tips. I know that some of you probably receive a lot more junkmail than I do. Sure it's some work to follow the steps below, but in the long run you'll be saving a lot of time, and your personal information won't be passed around like a cheap prostitute.

Here is the method I came up with that I felt was most efficient and effective:

1) Go to the following website and sign up: http://www.dmachoice.org. Click on all four junk-mail categories on the left and follow instructions (basically find the button at the bottom for opting out of everything). The first link goes to a "Consumer Credit Reporting Companies" where you want to opt out, and it will do this for five years.

2) Sign up here: http://www.catalogchoice.org. Basically you want to take every piece of junk mail you receive on an ongoing basis, and search for the company name on the website. If it exists you can opt out using the button (and sometimes a form).

3) If the company does not exist on the catalogchoice website, you can opt out manually by emailing or using the customer service "contact us" form on the company's website. You can also fax them if they have a number (I use faxzero.com). What you want to do is send them a message like this:

Subject: Remove (name) From Mailing List

Message: Please remove the following name and address from your postal mailing list. (Name), (Address). Please do not rent or trade my contact information with any other organization. Thank you.

What's important is that you match exactly the name and address they have written on the spam they sent you. So if they have your name as "Johhny D Cupcakes" put it down just like that in your message. If they sent it to "Current Resident" then use that for the name instead. List your account number or any unique identification number if you can, but most of the time I couldn't find that information. It will probably take a few months before these changes take effect, but in the long run it should be much less work. Good luck!

UPDATE (08/06/2011)...

I just wanted to put a small update here. So far after following the above instructions, I haven't seen a huge difference in junk mail. A few of the really stubborn and annoying places are still sending me spam today, two months later. I'm assuming that they "lost" my many requests to be taken off their stupid mailing lists. Still, I believe the amount of junk mail I receive will lessen over time. It takes a few months just to be taken off of these stupid mailing lists in the first place.

Also there is another angle I failed to mention. Apparently many of these junk mail providers are paying for the bulk of the postal service's fees. So you're actually paying less for mail service because these companies are paying for all this advertising... It's something to think about at least. I still hate junk mail, but would I want to pay $1 to send a letter? Or $20 to order something from Amazon? Hmmm..

UPDATE (07/07/2012)...

Well a year later and I have seen a big difference in junk mail. Only the most stubborn companies are still spamming me! Notably Comcast and financial institutions that I actually belong to such as my bank. However I have almost completely stopped receiving unsolicited mail from everyone else! I'd say the process was definitely worth it.