a bit of lovely news about spam in California

Sat Jan 5 11:32:22 PST 2002

>I recently became aware of an annoying "feature" of USMail delivery,
>namely that one cannot opt out of the neighborhood flyers, catalogs,
>grocery ads, etc that come in the mailbox almost daily.  They are
>addressed to "resident" at one's address, and the companies that put
>them together contract directly with the post office for delivery.

Mark it "return to sender" and put it back. Make the post office 
deliver it twice, once to you, once to them.

Hmm, now that I think of that, I wonder if anyone's done that on a 
regular basis. The USPS would have a legal obligation to return it to 
the sender, but do they actually do that in practice?

>Given that the US Postal Service is busily working on a plan to
>allow email delivery to US residential addresses, this is a very
>disturbing precedent.  Since physical-world arrangements tend to
>be translated into online arrangements as part of setting up new
>kinds of service, I find it very plausible that we could end up
>with "official" post office spam in our emailboxes down the road.

Only if your mail server accepts mail from the USPS/E-mail mail 
server, which I know mine certainly won't. ;)

D

-- 
+---------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| dredd at megacity.org  | "Thou art the ruins of the noblest man  |
|  Derek J. Balling   |  That ever lived in the tide of times.  |
|                     |  Woe to the hand that shed this costly  |
|                     |  blood" - Julius Caesar Act 3, Scene 1  |
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