In January, I contacted my MP about the website of the All-Party Group on Junk Mail. The group had long since been abolished but the Read Group Plc, the junk mail company that provided its secretariat, kept the website alive and shamelessly used it to promote its services and give the public factually incorrect and biased information about reducing junk mail.

I'm pleased to let you know the website has now been taken down.

Over the next four months 10% of sticker sales will go to… Vim!

Unless you're a programmer and/or system administrator this probably doesn't excite you one bit. Vim is a text editor, mostly used for things such as fiddling with configuration files and programming. It's a powerful toy, but not one the average computer user is likely to ever use.

So why Vim? It's partly because it's my editor of choice, and partly because all money donated to Vim goes to ICCF Holland, a charity helping orphans in Kibaale, Uganda. Vim is so-called charity ware; users are encouraged to make a donation, which goes directly to a good cause. It's an interesting concept, and it seems to work for ICCF Holland: a fair amount of the charity's income comes from Vim users.

A good starting point for finding out more about ICCF's work is the video embedded here (if you don't have Flash installed you may want to download the movie). The ICCF website contains lots more information, including interesting reports from its treasurer, Bram Moolenaar - who also happens to be the author of Vim.

If you're interested in Vim the obvious place to start is the Vim website. That said, if you're using Linux or Mac OS X you may want to dive into the terminal and enter vimtutor for a relatively short (but comprehensive) tutorial.

As the price of a first class stamp has gone up from 46p to 60p - an increase of 30% - I've had to review the prices I'm charging for the anti-junk mail stickers and other goodies I'm selling via the sticker shop on the Stop Junk Mail website.

It's not all bad news. For letterbox stickers I was charging £1 per sticker plus 50p for postage and packaging. I've increased the postage fee to 60p but at the same time reduced the price of stickers to just 90p. In other words, if you buy a sticker you still pay £1.50. And, if you buy more than one sticker you'll pay less. Buying two stickers, for instance, used to cost (2 x £1 + 50p =) £2.50. This is now (2 x 90p + 60p =) £2.40.

Other prices have gone up. The return to sender stamper can only be sent as a packet, and Royal Mail has increased the price for sending small packages from £1.97 to £2.70. I've therefore increased the postage fee from £2.00 to £2.70.

A word about Royal Mail's price increases, then? I'm actually not too bothered about it. Many online sellers have complained about the new prices, but then quite a few sellers out there charge postage fees that are completely disproportionate to what they pay Royal Mail. This is much more damaging for online trading then the increase in stamp prices.

That's right… the Mailing Preference Service no longer automatically de-registers people after five years time. If you sign up to the opt-out scheme for unsolicited addressed junk mail you'll now be opted out until the end of time.

It's a change that makes sense. I don't think anyone ever contacts the Direct Marketing Association to ask if they can please receive more unsolicited mail. It's only fair, therefore, to assume that registrants want to opt out for as long as possible. The burden of contacting the organisation should be with those who no longer want to be registered, not with the people who want to remain opted out.

What was particularly offending about the old policy was that the Direct Marketing Association used to de-register people in secret. After the five year registration period your details would be automatically deleted from the database. They would not let you know that they had done so, let alone that they would ask if you perhaps wanted to remain opted out.

In short, it was a policy designed to limit the take up of the Mailing Preference Service. The change (which, as per usual, has not been formally announced / explained) indicates that the Direct Marketing Association slowly starts to recognise that it at least has to pretend it supports your right to receive the mail you want (the slogan of the Mailing Preference Service). Showing too much bias only leads to organisations such as Consumer Focus setting up websites such as Stay Private (which, as you may know, not only allows people to register with various opt-out schemes in one go but also gives people the option to automatically renew registrations).

Anyway, it's an improvement, and another Manifesto item I can tick off the list.

If you live in the States, have a smartphone, and agree that unsolicited mail is a pest then this may be for you.

A company called Readabl has come up with an app that may help reduce junk mail. The concept behind PaperKarma is simple enough: after downloading the app and submitting your personal details (name, address, e-mail address, and phone number) you can start taking photos of junk mail you want to stop. Uploaded images are run against a database, and if the sender can be identified the app will send the offender an e-mail asking to take your details off its mailing list.

There are some obvious practical issues (is the database being kept up to date, do senders respect the requests, etc.) but it's a nice idea, and something that's bound to be introduced in the UK.

Or is it?

Personally, I'm not overly impressed. What's wrong with spending a couple of minutes reading up on how to stop junk mail yourself? Call me old-fashioned, but I find it somewhat ironic that people downloading the app in an attempt to reduce junk mail are at the same time handing over their personal details to a company that doesn't even have a proper website. Unsolicited mail is usually the result of exposing your personal details to potential junk mailers. Wouldn't it better to encourage people to be a bit more vigilant with their personal data?

Whether or not Readabl / PaperKarma can be trusted with your personal details I don't know. What seems clear, though, it that Readabl / PaperKarma is hoping to make money. The app's page on the iTunes site states that it will be free for a limited period only, and the page with privacy information on the PaperKarma website talks about a paper to digital conversion program. This concept has already been introduced in the UK by the Green Preference Service - a company presenting itself as being 'anti-junk mail' (though primarily interested in selling people's personal details).

What doesn't convince me either is that the presentation of the PaperKarma product is far from professional. The two paragraphs of text on the PaperKarma home page, for instance, are riddled with errors:

PaperKarma allows you to take photos of the junk mail you wish to stop [Do I really need PaperKarma for that?]. Snap a photo, and you're done [No you're not].

We automatically contact the Mailer [proper noun?] and remove you from their [its!] distribution list [No you're not - you put in a request for someone to be removed]. PaperKarma can stop most junk mail that is addressed directly [as opposed to indirectly?] to you.

Or, take this promotional image from the above-mentioned iTunes page:

Anyway, our junk mail hating friends at the other side of the Pond can download the app for their iPhones, Androids, and Windows phones.