The Bereavement Register has set up a website [link to rememberingyouthischristmas.com removed; the site has now been taken offline, JB] encouraging people who have been bereaved to write a Christmas message to their deceased loved one(s). If you have been bereaved and agree with the terms and conditions [link removed, JB] of the website (only four pages long) you can type a message of no more than 140 characters (including spaces) into a web form. While doing so, you can listen to a piece of music (©) composed by an employee of the Bereavement Register which makes Bach's Goldberg Variations sound like elevator music. Every detail has been thought of; the website even tells you not to enter your bank account details - a useful piece of advice for those who know someone on the other side still owing them money.

The messages collected via the website will be sent "into an area of deep space" at precisely 1am (GMT) on Christmas Day. As a comma separated text file, in case you were wondering. And just because us Earthlings can't be sure that the intended recipients will be able to open .csv files, your message will also be published on the website and appear as a Tweet on the accompanying Twitter page (unless, of course, you tick an opt-out box).

Really, how desperate for PR can you be? Sure, people have every right to grieve as they wish and expressing your feelings is an important part of the grieving process - but this stinks of shamelessly exploiting people for whom Christmas will be a difficult time. Let's be clear, the Bereavement Register is not some sort of charity. It's part of REaD UK (that lowercase 'a' is not a typo), a company that specialises in creating suppression files and which is the proud owner of 'lifestyle databases' containing personal information about millions of UK citizens (which are sold to junk mailers, who can then use the information to target you with yet more junk mail).

The Bereavement Register is 'just' one of eight different suppression files produced by REaD UK. It contains the names and addresses of people who have died, and is sold to bulk mailers who can use it to compare the register with their own mailing list. It's PR strategy is to present the service as a charitable and effective way of stopping junk mail sent to the deceased. It is not. According to REaD UK you can expect to be sent some 80 pieces of addressed junk mail in the first twelve months after your death. The average person alive gets just under 80 pieces of junk mail per year - clearly the service is not making much of a difference.

The Bereavement Register is a good idea in principle, but it has a fundamental flaw; that is, it's run as a for-profit business. As is the case with any suppression file, there are heaps of bulk mailers who either can't be bothered or can't afford to buy the Bereavement Register - how else can you explain the extraordinary amount of junk mail that is still being sent to people have died?

If the Bereavement Register is really so concerned about the "extreme upset" caused by junk mail sent to the deceased, why don't they produce a suppression file that is free? Why doesn't REaD UK urge its friends in the junk mail community to develop a system that would simply require any junk mailer to use such a free suppression file? Levy a tax of a penny on every piece of addressed junk mail and the industry would have £40m annually to spent on such a scheme.

Then, and only then, could REaD UK claim with dry eyes that this website has nothing to do with using the bereaved for a PR-stunt.

The other day I predicted there would be lots of news about junk mail send to the deceased, after the Deceased Preference Service (DPS) had started copying the marketing strategy of the Bereavement Register. I was right.

For a number of years now, the Bereavement Register sends regular press releases to mainly local newspapers highlighting the upset caused by junk mail send to the deceased. Journalists often publish these press releases unedited, giving the Bereavement Register lots of positive and free publicity. The DPS has started doing the same thing and yesterday got into the Daily Telegraph again.

They've made a bit more of an effort than the Bereavement Register and actually organised a mock funeral procession in central London. The DPS has paid the Telegraph for a sponsored article featuring a video of the procession showing four women walking behind a 'junk mail coffin'. The above image is a close-up of the coffin.

The DPS' research into how much junk mail is being send to the deceased is also a bit more advanced. The DPS claims to have established that people who die in northern cities receive the most junk mail (see the table below).

Naturally, the article in the Telegraph doesn't ask a single critical question. For instance, the paper doesn't wonder how it's possible that incredible amounts of junk mail are send to people who have died despite there being two well-established opt-out schemes. Could this perhaps have anything to do with the fact that bulk mailers often choose not to use 'deceased suppression files' because the Bereavement Register and DPS ask vast sums of money for obtaining a copy these files?

In short, when I hear the DPS talking about how "heartbreaking" it is when people ring them to report that they are receiving junk mail addressed to a deceased loved-one, I feel a bit sick. Helping these people is really not their aim. On the contrary, they're in the business of making a profit out of their misery.

Finally then, the top 10 of cities which the DPS fails is - according to their own figures - as follows:

A new service has been launched to reduce the amount of junk mail posted to people who have died. It's called the Deceased Preference Service, which I feel is a bit unfortunate. Clearly the company behind the service (Smee and Ford Ltd) thought choosing a name akin to the Mailing Preference Service would make it all sound official, but to me it sounds a bit like they're operating a hit man service.

Anyway, the Deceased Preference Service does the same as the Bereavement Register. They produce a list with the details of people who have passed away, which they then sell to bulk mailers. They in turn can compare the list with their own mailing list and take off the names of people who have died.

So, is this new service necessary?

The Bereavement Register, run by the Read Group, gets information about people who have died from a number of different sources and is pretty much up to date. The Read Group claims it covers 94 per cent of UK deaths. When you die, you're very likely to end up on the register. At the moment the list has some 3 million records and 10 to 30 thousand records are added each month.

So far so good. Sending junk mail to people who have died is offensive and damages the reputation of the bulk mailer. Clearly there is market for a Bereavement Register.

Yet, despite the fact that the details of almost all people who die in the UK are added to the Bereavement Register, the system is relatively ineffective. According to the Read Group's own figures, on average 80 pieces of addressed junk mail are sent to the 583,000 people who die every year in the UK following their death. How can a register that is so up to date fail so dramatically to prevent people who have passed away are bombarded with junk mail? The logical explanation is that it's a commercial service. It costs companies money to obtain a copy of the register; they have to pay either an annual fee of £750 or pay a charge per suppressed record. Not all companies are willing to pay these charges. In particular charities are notorious for doing little to 'clean' their mailing lists.

The competition from the Deceased Preference Service may help drive down prices and thus encourage more bulk mailers to use suppression files. But wouldn't the better solution be to let the Government run the Bereavement Register? By preventing the scheme is commercially run, the register could be freely available to all bulk mailers. To cover cost the Government could charge bulk mailers according to the size of their mail-outs. This would be particularly beneficial for small organisations that are now paying a relatively high price for these services.

No doubt marketeers would reply that self-regulation is much more effective, but so far there's little to support this claim…