[SwellJoe]

I've outsourced my snail mail spam handling to a mail forwarding service called St. Brendan's Isle (there are others like Paperless Mail). They shred and recycle junk mail for me automatically. I never even see it.

I tried going through the process of unsubscribing and opting out of everything I could find, and while it slowed for a few weeks, it eventually picked up again (just like email spam, when you make use of "opt out" options). J. Crew were the most damnably aggressive spammers...after repeated attempts to opt out, they were still sending me two catalogs a week. I'll never make the mistake of buying someone a gift from J. Crew again.

Anyway, I needed a mail forwarding service, anyway, since moving into an RV, but this turned out to be an awesome bonus and I wish I'd set it up years ago. I will never be without a mail forwarding service again...for less than $20/month it's just too convenient to have someone else sort and scan my mail, and get rid of the garbage.

[nitrogen]

How can you be sure they're only shredding junk?

[SwellJoe]

They shred bulk class mail. If it's anything important, I'm sure it is not being sent bulk class. And if someone wants me to get something enough to pay full price, then I guess I'll look at the cover, and maybe have the service scan the contents (the way it works with non-spam is they scan the cover of the mail, and then I can choose to receive the actual item in the next forwarded batch of mail, scan it so I can look at the contents online, or shred it and recycle it). The most egregious and annoying stuff is bulk mail.

Though I did, apparently end up on a Nationalist organizations mailing list, somehow (maybe through one of the various libertarian causes I've supported over the years; somehow there are ultra-right-wingers who think libertarians are sympathetic to their BS), so that's an annoying letter I've gotten recently that made it into the "look at the covers" phase. Since the word "Nationalist" was in the from address, I knew I could shred it immediately without opening it.

Oh, I just realized you might be theorizing that they might censor my mail. What they do is regulated by the federal government, and it takes roughly the equivalent of a power of attorney to let them open my mail. If they were ever caught tampering rather than acting as an honest agent, they'd be facing federal mail tampering charges. I don't have any reason to believe they would do that; they've been extremely polite, responsive, and they have excellent reviews. I can recommend them.