You go out to open your mailbox. You don't know it, but an unseen evil lurks behind that aluminum door and red plastic flag, waiting to ambush you. Unaware and optimistic of receiving REAL mail, whistling a tune, you put your fingers around the latch and pull. POW! Your feet are covered in a pile of discordantly-coloured envelopes from people you don't even know...not people...--corporations, computers-- touting the latest advance in foot-fungus technology or begging you to try their latest revision of pantyhose. Publishers Clearinghouse notices fly everywhere and coat your lawn. No letters from your best friend. No invitations to parties, or intriguing perfumed letters from that special someone. Just crap!
 

Why You Get It

The answer to this is short and not too sweet. Basically, they'll get your name on a list as someone who is on record as having bought a such-and-such, and assume that since you bought one, maybe they can entice you to buy another one! Same goes even if you haven't bought, but only requested information or subscribed to a magazine, etc. To them, someone who has expressed an interest in such-and-such will probably be likely to buy one! This fits in with the other ploy they use to determine who to junkmail, which is trying to finagle demographic information out of their records (see below) and try to guess at what you might buy considering your race, marital status, income, etc. Even from your name alone, they can take a good crack at your gender and nationality: "Just your name gives their computers a pretty good idea of whether you're a white male or a Hispanic female." (Junkbusters). On a related note, see below about the use of "test mailings" to assess your susceptibility to junkmail ads.

Or, you may not have even "given" out your address at all. It has just as likely been misappropriated from Post Office or public records, or bought/rented from another company.

Where They Get Your Name & Address

• From the Government. Your drivers' license registration, property records, marriage licenses, census data, etc. quite often gets into the hands of direct marketers and marketing bureaus.
• From the Postal Service! When you register as a new postal customer or change your address, this information gets sold out to the major junkmailers within weeks. A good portion of the postal service's revenue comes from third-class bulk mail. Think they'll miss out on such an opportunity to maximise their profits?
• Buy it from another company you've done business with. Companies routinely make available a customer list complete with your name, age, income, buying habits, etc. (for a fee, of course) to other companies. Credit-card companies and magazine publishers are notorious for this! Don't rule out other "companies" such as your state DMV, clubs, professional societies or even charitable organisations. They sell names too!
• Buy it from a company whose sole business is to sell peoples' names. Many list vendors exist, whose goal in life is to compile the largest and most comprehensive databases of names and addresses possible, whose entire businesses revolve around the profitable sale of your personal information.
• Warranty registration cards - In most situations, these are not required. In fact, despite whatever the company may be implying with the Warranty card, in most states it is illegal to make you send in the registration to be covered by the warranty! They're just a nice, convenient way to tie the information about what was purchased to a name and address. Many also ask you about your marriage, income, etc., to collect data about your demographics and buying habits.

Shutting The Junk Valve
Pretty much everyone agrees: staying off a list is next to impossible. The less lists you get on, the less junk you'll get (assuming these lists aren't merged or traded around too much), but remaining entirely unlisted is a lost cause. So, aside from avoiding the biggest and nastiest name-sellers and list brokers, your best bet is probably to get on companies' "do not mail" lists as you receive junk from them. A short checklist of ideas for limiting your exposure to junk:

• If you change your address, get ahold of your friends, etc. and tell them individually, rather than using the Post Office's change-of-address forms. The PO quickly sells this information to direct mailers and encourages junkmail to be sent to these virgin addresses.
A mail carrier informs me that if you do fill out a COA, check "temporary" and make it for 1 year. He goes on to say that this method will "only forward first class without address correction.  This way you can still get good mail and say last bills. They don't forward the magazines and they don't update your lists."
• When you deal with a company, inform them "Please do not rent or share my name." You can even have such a message printed on your address labels, cheques... Ask nicely, many companies' computer databases are set up so that names can be marked "do not share".
• Be wary of contests or questionnaires of any sort.
• Sick of those infernal coupon-clipper mailings from your grocery? Avoid those "Preferred Customer", "Fresh Values", etc. discount cards offered by many stores and supermarkets like the plague! They track your purchases for even more, highly-targeted junkmail. Think, why would they want to keep track of your every purchase and scan this all into their computer databases under your name?? (Besides, do you really want information about your last condom purchase, etc. stored in any database?
• Some companies such as Radio Shack beg you to give them your name & address. However, there is no law requiring you to provide one (although many pimply-faced employees will insist upon it--they might even refuse to sell without it!). At about this time is when a nice phony address and pseudonym come in handy.

Direct Marketing Association Mail Preference Service
P.O. Box 9008
Farmingdale, NY 11735-9008

Much junkmail comes in the form of supermarket flyers and coupon-clipper rags--the most common are ADVO "Mailbox Values" and "Harte Hanks Potpourri" (depending largely on where you live). These are normally just dropped into each and every mailbox down the line. As postal regulations prohibit unidentified or unaddressed mail, these flyers "must be delivered at the same time as an address card. Locate this address card; the cards usually have an advertisement and a photograph of a missing child. Call directory assistance to get the phone number of the sender, and call to get off the list." (obviously.com) Once you're not getting the address card, you shouldn't be getting the junk flyer that accompanies it--you may need to point out the lack of this card to your postal carrier, but it is against postal regs to deliver the flyer without it.

Craine, a mail carrier, writes in the following:

"Another thing is your carrier is your best defense against unwanted junk. You touch on the cards, what we call third bundle. These are universally hated by ALL carriers. I have seen ppl get off these lists but it only works if your regular carrier knows about it. If People could get to know their regular carrier it will go a long way to stop junk mail."

If you're really sick of getting crapola from a particularly ambitious junk factory, all it takes is one short form to place a prohibitory order on their mail. According to Junkbusters, "A U.S. Federal law gives you the power to stop any non-governmental organization from sending you further mail." Just ask for a copy of Form 2150 or Form 1500 (Application for Listing and/or Prohibitory Order). While this mechanism was originally aimed at stopping pornographic come-ons by mail (the form may even make reference to "pornographic and undesirable material"), the Supreme Court has ruled that it applies to any mail you find objectionable, in this case junk solicitations. You can grab a copy of the magic papers by phoning your post office, and send it along with a sample mailing to:

Prohibitory Order Processing Center
US Postal Service
Post Office Box 3744
Memphis TN  38173-0744

Return To Sender

According to Worsham, unopened mail can be marked Refused, and the post office must pick it up. First class mail refused in this manner will be returned to the sender, while bulk-class mail will be thrown out or recycled by the Post Office itself. However, if a piece of bulk mail has "Address correction requested" printed on it, you can circle this and treat it like first-class mail.
 

Won't Help

Some methods that might not help you out in getting less junkmail:

• Business Reply envelopes: Some companies provide a convenient, postage pre-paid envelope for sending back your order. If you use this envelope to send them non-order requests, angry letters, bricks, etc. it will probably be ignored. Usually these envelopes are opened by people who get paid by the hour to sort actual orders into their appropriate categories, not deal with complaints; send a Business Reply envelope containing anything other than a "Yes!" or a cheque or a "Bill me later" often winds up in what is politely referred to as the "circular file" -- along with gum wrappers and empty Coke cans. It WILL cost them postage, though! So if you get junk with a business reply, feel free to seal it (empty, or with junk papers in it) and send it back, just don't expect anyone to read its contents on the other end. (Incidentally, some people recommend overflowing the envelopes with heavy objects, bricks, spent batteries, etc. to inflate the postage--it doesn't, the post office just throws the over-postage envelopes away!)

Targeting

When you get junkmail you may see some numbers by your name, sometimes with innocuous names such as "Priority Code" or "Customer Number". According to Junkbusters, these are to help asses the results of a form of psychological experiment in which they subtly modify the contents of the mailing, wording, etc. to see which combinations make people buy more:

"Direct mailers perform experiments on you using the same methodologies as telemarketers, but they conduct them more slowly and quietly. The only clues that you might notice are the two numbers above your name and address on your junk mail: One is usually colored yellow, and marked ``code'' or occasionally ``priority code'' (which makes it sound less secretive and more like it's doing you a favor). The code records in a way that you cannot decode where the company got your name, along with some of the psychographic and demographic factors that they are measuring against your behavior.  The other number, usually colored blue, is optimistically called your ``customer number,'' even though you may never have bought a thing from them in your life. It is used to assemble a complete history of everything you ever buy, return, ask about, or recommend to your mother. It also lets them track which individually targeted message you are responding to. (The pages inside the letter or catalog they sent you may be deliberately different from the one they send your neighbor.) These numbers are also used to track payments owed to the company that rented them the information about you that led to any purchase you make. One reason that they are so careful to collect all this information is because they can use it to create lists that can be rented to someone else. The laws in most places allow everything that their awesome high-tech data-gathering machines learn about you to be sold, rented, bartered, carelessly disposed of, or given away to anyone they want, unless you tell them that you don't permit them to do so. (Most companies won't give it to taxation authorities however, unless they are forced to.) "

Who Sold My Name?

A number of junkmail haters discuss an easy method of knowing what companies are selling your personal information: When providing any company with your mailing address, use a different middle initial each time, e.g. Give your name to ABC Corp. as John A. Doe, and give your name to XYZ Corp. as John B. Doe, etc... and make a note of which you give to which. When Publisher's Clearinghouse starts sending you junk addressed to John L. Doe, you know exactly who sold your name! A similar tactic involves using a meaningless/bogus road designator (street, place, avenue, parkway, circle...), or supplying a descriptive "room number" or "apartment number", "office number", etc. with the address (assuming you live in a residential home, most of which don't have room numbers). If you DO live in an apartment, try adding extra letters to your apartment number--if you live in Apt. 12, try Apt. 12B next time a suspicious company wants to know.

Knowing who is divulging your information without consent gives you an extra edge in making these companies afraid to mess with you, or even collecting damages from them (see below). On his anti-junkmail page Daniel Convissor writes: "[G]ive them a slightly misspelled version of your name AND tell them not to give your information out to others. You should keep a list of who you gave what name to, so you can spot violators and hound them. These steps especially apply when registering software." Sometimes the numbers printed on the mailing label can identify (to the company, anyway) the list your name came from.

Some states and provinces may have laws that can be put into use to prevent junkmailers and other direct marketers from exploiting you commercially. To some people, the worst part of direct marketing is the enormous profits certain corporations make off the backs of hard-working citizens, without consent nor compensation, by selling materials which do not even belong to them. For example, the state of Virginia has the following on the books:

"Any person whose name, portrait, or picture is used without having first obtained the written consent of such person... for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade, such persons may maintain a suit in equity against the person, firm or corporation so using such person's name, portrait, or picture to prevent and restrain the use thereof; and may also sue and recover damage for any injuries sustained by reason of such use. And if the defendant shall have knowingly used such person's name, portrait or picture in such manner as is forbidden or declared to be unlawful by this chapter, the jury, in its discretion, may award exemplary damages."     Code of Virginia, Section 8.01-40