Stop Junk Mail, Junk Phone Calls and Junk Email

Are you tired of the massive amounts of junk phone calls, paper mail and email that you always get but don’t want? Here are some tips to avoid the drudgery.

FOR UNWANTED PAPER MAIL or first class junk mail:

Cross out the address, circle the first class postage and write "Return to Sender: No Forwarding Address". Then drop it in any mail box.

FOR BULK JUNK MAIL:

The post office throws away bulk mail it can’t deliver, so returning it does no good. Bulk mail is the hardest to deal with because the Postal Service actively provides addresses, support and encouragement to mailers. So, here’s what you do. If "address correction requested" is written on the label, circle it and treat it like first class junk mail.For catalogs, you can either call the company’s 800 number and have the label handy, or write your desired instructions on the catolog’s mailing label and fax it to the company.

FOR UNWANTED TELEPHONE CALLS:

If unwanted telephone marketing calls area problem, you can send a postcard with your complete telephone number, area code, address, and names of people receiving the unwanted calls to

Remember, Federal Law prohibits telemarketers from "Initiating an outbound telephone call to a person when that person previously has stated that he or she does not wish to receive an outbound telephone call made by or on behalf of the seller whose goods or services are being offered." So, you can simply interrupt the telemarketer and say, "Please permanently remove me from your calling list." Remember that they were the ones interrupting you in the first place. If the same people call back, they are violating the law.

Ask them for their company name, supervisor name and phone number and make a report to the National Fraud Information Center at nfic@internet.mci.com or at 1-800-876-7060.

FOR UNWANTED EMAIL:

To stop unwanted spam on your Web page:
If you have a mailto link on your page, expect to get junk mail. You can remove the mailto link and force people to manually enter your email address. This will cut down spam considerably.

Further, you can state your email address in a way readable only to humans (e.g. bryce at machine uclink.berkeley.EDU).For Newsgroup postings, you can use an obviously false return address on all postings. Most news programs let you set your return address as whatever you’d like. Include your real email address in the body of your posted message.

For more information, send comments, questions or any additional to bryce@uclink.berkeley.edu, or http://www.obviously.com/recycle/.

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