Anyone who has ever contacted the Door-to-Door Opt-Out and/or Your Choice Dummy Scheme will be familiar with the draconian warnings both 'services' issue to people wanting to stop of unsolicited leaflets. Their favorite warning is that you may miss all sorts of important information from central and local government if you decide to say 'no' to unsolicited mail.

It's completely unclear what sort of "important information" the schemes are referring to. I guess they're talking about local authority publications; those free magazines with information about what your local council is up to. Some people find them useful, others view them as self-congratulatory propaganda. Whatever you make of them, I think that there's a good argument for only delivering council magazines to householders who actually want to receive them. Not only is it dubious that local councils are spending millions on producing door-drops; by doing so they also give junk mailers an excuse for discouraging people from reducing junk mail.

To illustrate the point, here's why Bitter Wallet is looking forward to paying the next Council Tax bill…

One of the many, many, many commercial opt-out services in the States has turned out the lights. ProQuo, founded in 2006, quietly disappeared in July. So quietly that nobody seemed to have noticed its disappearance until this week.

The service ProQuo offered was free but not without a catch; the company hoped to make money by getting people to opt-in to receiving some junk mail. The opt-in requests could then be sold to junk mailers. Not an approach I support, and one that's bound to be introduced in the UK sooner or later. Junk mailers hate opt-out schemes; changing them to opt-in / opt-out schemes just makes sense for them.

Americans can still register with tons of other commercial opt-out services, as well as with the free DMA Choice scheme. And of course they can support the Do Not Mail campaign for an opt-out service that would really be effective at reducing unsolicited mail.

In memory of ProQuo, here's a video advertising the service used in a promotional campaign in 2008.

The Yellow Pages Association (YPA), according to its own calculations the representative of 90 per cent of Yellow Pages publishers in the US and Canada, has finally set up a central Yellow Pages opt-out service. At yellowpagesoptout.com you may be able to tell the publisher of your Yellow Pages that you no longer need the book.

May be able, because the YPA doesn't full-heartedly support its own opt-out service. The organisation has always been strongly against too much consumer choice. Only as recently as April this year, YPA President Neg Norton boasted that giving consumers the choice to opt-out of getting the Yellow Pages dumped on the doorstep would cripple local businesses and force industry layoffs. He proudly added that the YPA had been successful in beating proposals for opt-out schemes in a number of States.

Still, under increasing pressure from consumers, State Governments and organisations such as Yellow Pages Goes Green and Paperless Petition (which have both been running unofficial Yellow Pages opt-out services for ages) the YPA had to do something. [Update June 2012: both websites have been taken over by the Yellow Pages - JB]. So, as representatives of bulk mailers do, they sat down, wrote some voluntary guidelines, and designed a green looking logo (called the 'Yellow Pages Industry Environmental Seal') to give the public the impression that 540 million unsolicited Yellow Pages per year and environmental sustainability are perfectly compatible.

Of course it's not all bad. The good thing about the YPA's Joint Environmental Guidelines [Hyperlink to ypassociation.org removed in June 2012. The Yellow Pages Association has renamed itself 'Local Search Association' and the old website no longer exists - JB] is that it asks publishers to co-operate with a central opt-out service. What remains a shame is that the publishers don't have to comply. You may find, therefore, that your local distributor doesn't give you the choice to opt-out, either because they're not a member of the YPA or because they agree with Mr Norton's views on consumer choice.

Anyway, let's call it progress.

Tip: whenever you give your name and address to an organisation, always put the small print under a microscope and tick any opt-out box you can find. It's the single most effective way of preventing credit card solicitations and other addressed junk mail. Just to illustrate how safe your personal data is with junk mailers, read this story about the nine-year-old Cody, who got inundated with junk mail after his mother bought him a subscription to National Geographic's Kids Magazine.

Interestingly, the television station that reported the news was not able to find out how the boy's name and address ended up on so many mailing lists. Also interesting is that National Geographic reassured the broadcaster that the boy's record was marked as 'Do not exchange or rent'. So much for data protection?

An Ombudsman has told Hong Kong Post that it is abusing the postal service and bringing an unwanted nuisance and annoyance to the public. You guessed it; we're talking about junk mail…

Hong Kong Post started delivering junk mail in 1992. As is the case in the UK, the 'direct mail' market is largely unregulated in Hong Kong and the Post Office sees junk mail as a nice little earner, without much regard for the environment and people who are offended by unsolicited advertisements coming through the door.

One offended person decided to put the case before the Ombudsman. The conclusions of the investigation that followed will no doubt give many junk mailers shivers. An existing opt-out scheme was described as ineffective, unrealistic, biased (towards the senders of junk mail), and an unreasonable burden on recipients.

Interestingly, the Ombudsman found the complainant's suggestion to introduce an opt-out sticker scheme worth considering. People would no longer have to add their personal details to yet another database just to stop something they never asked for in the first place. Indeed, exactly what Stop Junk Mail would like to see in Britain, where we have not one, but two failing opt-out services (the Door-to-Door Opt-Out and Your Choice).

Of course, Ombudsmen don't have the power to introduce sticker systems. He recommended that the matter is dealt with in court, and asked the Postmaster-General to review the service and explore an effective way for citizens to opt out.