Should I book my summer airline tickets now?

How can I protect my physical mail box from junk mail? I conduct all my personal business online. I receive all my bank statements and bills electronically. So the only reason I check my mail is to throw away all the garbage the mail carrier leaves in it. Is there anything I can do to stop getting so much junk mail?
-- Jon, Salt Lake City, Utah

Actually there is. You can reduce the amount of unsolicited national advertising mail you receive at home by contacting the Direct Marketing Association and registering with their Mail Preference Service.

You can do this by mail for free or online for $5. With the online option, you will need to provide a valid credit card number to pay the fee and verify your identity.

You'll find a list of various options available at the DMA’s Mail Preference Service Web site. By putting your name on their “do-not-mail” list, you should greatly reduce the amount of commercial mail you get.

The list is distributed to DMA members at least four times a year. It is also made available to other marketers who want to purge their mailing lists of people who do not want unsolicited mail.  Your name will remain on file for five years. After that, you can sign up again.

This service does not apply to mail sent to “resident/occupant” or to mail sent to your business address. You cannot use the Mail Preference Service to have your name removed from a specific mailing list. If you want a specific company to stop mailing you, you’ll need to write directly to them.

Junk mail doesn’t end when you do, which can be traumatic for widows and widowers. To help these families, the DMA now offers “The Deceased Do Not Contact List.” Information about the individual who has passed away can be registered by friends, relatives and caregivers. There is a $1 credit card verification fee for this service. The DMA says there are two reasons for this: to make sure they have a permanent record of the person who did the registration and to prevent fraud or misuse of the system.

All DMA members are required to honor this request. This information is also offered to any other companies and non-profit organizations. DMA says the amount of mail addressed to the deceased individual should start to drop off within about 3 months.

By the way, while we call it “junk” mail, the U.S. Postal Service calls this advertising or bulk business mail “standard mail” -- and it makes a lot of money for them. Last year, the USPS handled more than 100 billion pieces of “standard mail,” which produced $18.9 billion dollars in revenue. Postal Service Spokesman Ernie Swanson says “without that volume of standard mail, first-class rates would undoubtedly have to be higher."

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