How To Stop Junk Mailing

Stop Junk Mail

Reduce the junk mail you receive by using the following free services. Each service is different, so using all three will give you the best results toward significantly reducing unwanted catalogs, retail promotions, credit card offers, insurance offers, and other junk mail.

Free opt-out services
CatalogChoice is managed by a non-profit organization that works with over 8,000 companies to encourage them to voluntarily honor your opt-out requests. Use the service to stop unwanted mail and catalogs that you currently receive.
DMAchoice allows you to remove your name from the marketing lists of 3,600 companies and organizations that are members of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). DMA represents about 80% of the total volume of marketing mail in the U.S., and they require their members to honor opt-out requests. Use the service to keep your name off future prospecting lists.
OptOutPreScreen.com allows you to remove your name from lists that the consumer credit reporting companies Equifax, Experian, Innovis, and TransUnion sell to companies for prescreened and preapproved credit card and insurance policy offers. The consumer credit reporting companies are required by law to honor your opt-out requests.
Will these services stop all junk mail?
While you can greatly reduce the amount of junk mail you receive by using opt-out services, you will not be able to stop all junk mail. Some mail is sent to all households in your area—such as political mail and advertisements from local stores, grocers, and restaurants. These offers may not have opt-out options.

You’ll also continue receiving mail from companies that you currently do business with. To stop these types of offers, directly write or email each of the senders.

How do I stop phone books?
Use National Yellow Pages' Consumer Choice & Opt-Out to stop phone book deliveries to your home or business.

Why stop junk mail?
View the Product Stewardship Institute’s infographic on stopping unwanted junk mail to learn about the social, environmental, and economic problems associated with junk mail.

Hold mail

Stop junk mail

Change of address

US mail tracking

USPS hours

How To Put An Mail On Hold

Postal Service site lets anyone hold your mail
The Web site for the national mail delivery agency enables anyone on the Internet to stop your mail delivery. No proof of identification is required.


Security
March 24, 2008
5:51 AM PDT
by Michael Horowitz

Wednesday night on Off The Hook, a radio show on WBAI in New York, Emmanuel Goldstein and the guys from 2600 discussed a feature on the Web site of the U.S. Postal Service that can only be described as ill-conceived.

If you're going to be away from home for a while, the your local post office can hold your mail to avoid an overflowing mailbox. Fine.

In the old days (and you can still do this), you went to the office and filled out a form (PDF). Someone on the show who has done this said the Postal Service doesn't validate the identity of the person who requests mail to be held. It validates only the identity of the person who comes to pick up the mail.

Government techies copied this manual system to the Internet.

You can go to https://holdmail.usps.com (or click on Hold Mail at the Postal Service home page, as shown below) and put a hold on mail delivery. Notice that I didn't say put a hold on your mail delivery. You can put a hold on mail delivered to anyone. This is true with the traditional system, too, but the Internet makes it worse, adding more anonymity and making the process easier. Too easy.



The agency site claims that it needs a name, address, and phone number to stop mail delivery. When tested, however, this turns out not to be the case. Requests with wrong names and wrong phone numbers were accepted, according to a listener who wrote in to the show. All you really need to know is an address.

And with the address, you can stop all mail delivery, not just mail to one person. Quoting from the Frequently Asked Questions: "All mail, regardless of name, will be held for the address entered. Submitting an online Hold Mail request once is all that is required to hold mail delivery for everyone at the address."

Don't have a computer? Simply call 800-ASK-USPS




Off The Hook runs for an hour, but you can listen to this 8-minute segment here

Hold mail

Stop junk mail

Change of address

US mail tracking

USPS hours