I just can't stand junk mail. Seriously. I hate it. It's not like you can just throw it out or recycle it anymore. Much of it contains personal information that can be used to steal your identity or be used against you for some sort of a "social hack". The late/ great Mitch Hedburg made a quip about people handing out fliers. He said they're essentially stopping you when you walk by and saying, "Here, YOU throw this away". Well that's what junk mail is to me. Except somebody took the time, and the postage to mail it to me and I can't just tell them no and keep walking. *dramatic sigh* If only there was a way to eliminate junk mail for free.
While most people will just shrug and say, "What can you do?" I'm giving you the heads up on how to keep your mail box nice and empty. Except for those bills of course, that's all you.
I'm talking about.... Catalog Choice.
This amazing company made a website that is absolutely free to use. You read correctly. FREE. No strings. They act like a junk mail blocker. You create an account. They walk you through the three simple to steps to get you started as you can see in the figure to the right
Do what I do. Wait until you get a stack of the mail and log yourself in to their website. Then add all of the companies that are exploiting your mail box and wait. Catalog Choice contacts the companies with a request to stop mailing you as well as asking that your name not be sold or rented to any other scumbag companies that would put you on similar mailing lists. (can you tell I hate junk mail. ;-) Catalog Choice then keeps you updated as to the status of those requests. Again, I remind you it's absolutely FREE. There are other things you could opt into with Catalog Choice that would be paid services, one is Mail Stop which is essentially paying to have your name removed from the lists companies use to market things, but for my purposes I'd rather save the $35/year and manually enter in the companies that bother me. It doesn't take that much time and it essentially accomplishes the same thing. I signed up with Catalog Choice one month ago and already I've seen a huge reduction in the amount of mail I'm receiving, although they tell you it can take up to 90 days.
So consider this next time you're shredding a bunch of documents with your name on them that you never requested from a company you've never used. Catalog Choice is alright in my book.
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