Spam and Junk Mail

As more people use email, marketers are increasingly using email messages to pitch their products and services you may receive a lot of junk email messages from people you don't know. Some consumers find unsolicited commercial email - also known as "spam" - annoying and time consuming; others have lost money to bogus offers that arrived in their email in-box.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) spam website at www.ftc.gov/spam has information about the FTC's recent law enforcement actions against deceptive commercial email and spammers' responsibilities under the CAN-SPAM law. In the "For Consumers" section, you'll find tips on how to reduce the amount of spam email in your in-box.

If you get spam email that you think is deceptive, forward it to spam@uce.gov. The FTC uses the spam stored in this database to pursue law enforcement actions against people who send deceptive email.

Congresswoman Foxx was also a cosponsor of H.R. 5769, the Stop M-Spam Abuse as a Sales industry Habit (SMASH) Act of 2008.  This bill would direct the Federal Trade Commission to revise the Telemarketing Sales Rule to explicitly prohibit the sending of a text message containing an unsolicited advertisement to a cellular telephone number listed on the national do-not-call registry.  To read more about this bill click here.


Options for opting out of junk mail are growing
Several Web sites make it easy to get off of mailing lists
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: February 10, 2008
NEW YORK

There's nothing like a flood of holiday catalogs -- followed by an even bigger flood of post-holiday sales catalogs -- to make families think about trying to get their names off mailing lists.

Unwanted catalogs and other unsolicited mailings create clutter in a home, take a toll on the nation's forests and require time and energy to clear away.

So it's good news that consumers have more options for getting off mailing lists.

Some of the opt-out programs are sponsored by mass-marketing trade groups, but a growing number are run by groups with ecological goals.

Besides saving trees, some families may want to stop unwanted mail for privacy reasons, said Pam Dixon, the executive director of the World Privacy Forum research group in Carlsbad, Calif.

"It's a problem of annoyance," she said.

"People want to be left alone, and they have a right to be left alone."

Dixon said that most people are aware that they can get off telemarketing lists by registering their phones on the "Do Not Call" list maintained by the Federal Trade Commission.

"But when it comes to things such as catalogs, prescreened credit-card offers, spam, things like that, they're not sure what to do," she said.

So the forum has developed a how-to list titled the "Top 10 Opt Outs" that's posted on its Web site at www.worldprivacyforum.org.

Dixon said that eliminating unwanted mail cuts down on the amount of personal information that's in circulation, removing a source for identity thieves.

Families trying to reduce catalog and other mass-market mailings can contact the Direct Marketing Association, which runs the Mail Preference Service.

In the past, consumers had to opt out of all lists.

But an updated Web site launched by the association in January at www.dmachoice.org allows consumers to opt out -- or even opt in -- to a particular company's mailing list.

As part of the update, the association dropped the $1 fee for the online service.

Consumers also can write to the association at Mail Preference Service, P.O. Box 643, Carmel, NY, 10512-0643 to get off mailing lists. A $1 fee still applies to mail requests.

The other major source of unwanted mail, prescreened credit and insurance offers, can be addressed through the opt out service maintained by the consumer-credit reporting industry, mainly the credit agencies.

Families can get their names off lists through the Web site www.optoutprescreen.com, or by calling 888-567-8688.

Pat Kachura, the senior vice president for corporate responsibility with the association, said that families at any time can contact catalog issuers directly and ask to be removed from their mailing lists.

"But going to a single (Internet) site can be more convenient," she said.

Kachura said that 4.5 million consumers are registered with the Mail Preference Service and that about 930 million mailings are suppressed each year as a result.

Families also can get outside help in getting rid of catalogs, from services that collect a number of consumer requests and forward them to catalog mailers.

Last October, the Ecology Center in Berkeley, Calif., launched its Catalog Choice site at www.catalogchoice.com.

Consumers indicate which catalogs they don't want to receive, and the service notifies the companies to stop mailings. The service is free.

"We're not anti-catalog, we're anti-waste," said Chuck Teller, the executive director of the center.

The group, which finances projects focusing on sustainable production and consumption, said it already has more than 555,000 participants who have opted out of more than 6.7 million catalogs.

"We know consumers can do it themselves, but they weren't," Teller said.

"We have lots of things to do in our day, and this is one thing that wasn't getting done. At best, consumers were just dropping the unwanted catalogs in a recycle bin."

Another ecologically minded service is www.41pounds.org, based in Ferndale, Mich.

It takes its name from the estimated weight of the junk mail each household receives each year.
Households pay $41 for a five-year membership, and some of the profits are shared with environmental groups, such as American Forests and StopGlobalWarming.org.

The site has about 10,000 subscribers, and donations last year totaled $85,000.