1. Sign up for auto-pay whenever possible
2. Set up Google/Yahoo Calendar reminders around the statement issue and due dates

There’s a petition out at Do Not Mail: The Petition that’s intended to convince Congressional leaders of the need for a Do Not Mail Registry that provides a single place from which you can basically unsubscribe from all the crap that ends up in your mailbox. Sounds good to me.

But if you want to take immediate action on the junk mail, try the tips listed here:

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse: Reducing Junk Mail

It’s pretty comprehensive, and includes all the following sources of junk mail:

1. Mailing lists of major national marketers
2. Flyers and advertising supplements
3. Catalog, mail order lists and magazines
4. Pre-approved offers of credit
5. Phone books and reverse directories
6. U.S. Postal Service and change of address data file
7. Charities and nonprofits
8. Sweepstakes and prizes
9. Product registration cards and consumer surveys
10. Supermarket loyalty cards
11. Public records
12. Data compilers and mailing list companies

Even if you’re not particularly keen on going through the hassle of saving paper, fuel, and energy, you should definitely deal with the credit bureaus and your own financial institutions. Those pre-approved offers and balance transfer checks are easy targets for identity theft and can screw up your credit faster than you can fix it. For the credit bureaus, go to https://www.optoutprescreen.com/ to opt out. For your credit card and checking accounts, call the number on the back of your credit/ATM card and tell them to remove you from all mailing and phone lists and not share any information with anyone else permanently.

We have a few of these “inconvenient” bags for groceries and other uses. I actually find them more convenient than paper or plastic bags because they’re stronger and have greater capacity. The wider handle is also easier on the hands when loaded down with stuff. But the very best thing about the bags is that they help me maintain the holier-than-thou attitude that wins me so many friends.

I’m using Gmail to handle all my domain email. With 4.7GB of space for every account I create, I can access my email from anywhere with Internet access or via my Helio Ocean, take advantage of Gmail’s search capabilities and spam filters, and count on Gmail’s reliability and uptime.

https://www.google.com/a/

The mail service my hosting provider offers has actually gone down a couple times over the past several years and did nothing to combat the spam issue. Whenever I’m away I’ve had to log on to delete spam messages so that my 10MB mailboxes don’t fill up while I’m away. Plus the recent upgrade of my hosting provider’s system took away the catch-all email address feature that enabled me to personalize email addresses for different sites.

Making the switch was relatively painless and easy, and so far it’s been working great. I’ve been getting 200+ spam messages a day, all of them caught by Gmail’s filters except maybe 1 spam message every couple days. The false positives have been even less frequent. Of course, it took me a while to get used to this; I’d been accustomed to having mail messages to download to Thunderbird every time I checked mail, even if they were all spam. When this stopped being the case, I worried that I’d fucked something up in the setup, when in fact there just wasn’t any new legitimate email.

Other Google Apps are also available for your domain if you choose to turn them on: Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and Google Start Page.