A Brief History of Junk

  Junk is stuff that you don't want or need

The mail you throw away unopened, the phone calls you would rather not receive, the weeds in your garden are all junk to you. But one person's weed is another's precious flower, and one person's junk may be another's treasure. Since most salespeople seem to have a high opinion of what they sell, it's often necessary to state in advance what you consider junk to avoid learning more about it than you would like. In recent years the volume and intensity of junk messages have reached such high levels that many people consider some or all direct marketing solicitations as intrusive clutter that interferes with their lives.

  Junk messages are delivered through various media

Modern marketing has developed several different ``media'' through which junk messages are sent to you.

  Junk mail: do you get enough?

Junk Mail is sometimes called Direct Mail, but usually only by the people who produce it. It was invented in the U.S. at the beginning of this century by a Mr. Sears, and it continues to grow: the annual figure for the US passed 70 billion pieces in 1995. Its bulk can fill mailboxes, engulfing important personal mail. The time-consuming task of sorting through it is made more difficult by the creative people employed to write it, who try to get their envelopes to look important or valuable enough to open.

Although most people regard junk mail as an annoyance and a waste of trees, few would want all commercial mailings stopped completely. Some need the coupons to make ends meet, others love this clothing catalog or that sweepstakes, and in the U.S. the cost of mailing a letter would increase if the U.S. Post Office lost its enormous business delivering fourth class mail.

Nobody knows better than the companies sending this mail how much of their carefully crafted copy is discarded unread. Advertising people admit that 80% of every budget is wasted. But because they have difficulty finding out exactly which people it's wasted on, they tend to err on the side of sending it to anyone who might possibly give it a sideways glance. We think that if consumers had a way of honestly and accurately stating what they ignore, direct mailers would choose to save the postage and the paper, and avoid annoying them.

  Junk Phone Calls: Are you a fugitive in your own home?

Junk Phone Calls are known to almost everyone as telemarketing calls. This widely unpopular invention of the sixties has caused millions of people to hide behind their answering machines, afraid of having to shake off the stranger who is determined to get them to buy insurance at dinnertime. Most countries have laws to restrain telemarketers, but many people feel angry that they have not been given a way to eliminate these constant unwelcome interruptions from their lives.

  Junk Visits: Death of the salesman?

Junk Visits from door-to-door sales representatives are an ancient practice now heading for extinction in the United States, but not in many other countries where householders take a less trigger-happy attitude toward the defense of their homes against unwelcome visitors. (If American telephones came with a button marked ``detonate caller's equipment'' telemarketing too might have disappeared in a puff of smoke.) Some people welcome personal attention from salespeople, and those who don't have traditional remedies, such as signs warning ``No solicitations'' or ``Beware vicious dog.''

  Junk Faxes: Would you pay for the printing of your junk mail?

Probably because they directly cost the receiver money for paper, Junk Faxes are generally not tolerated; they were outlawed in the U.S. and many other countries soon after the machines became popular.

  Junk Data: Heard the wholesale electronic gossip about you?

We coined the phrase Junk Data to describe information about you, whether accurate or inaccurate, important or trivial, private or public, that you would prefer did not exist (or at least would not be disclosed more than is necessary.) Junk data about consumers is traded every day in huge volumes. This is generally done without your consent or even knowledge.

You generally have no way of finding out what junk data exists about you, nor who is using it or handling it. A few people have been the unlucky exceptions to this silence, when they received a personal letter or offensive telephone call from a prison inmate employed as a telemarketer or data entry operator. (Direct marketers have long been attracted by the lower wages paid to prisoners.) Perhaps the best-known victim of this so far is Ohio grandmother Beverly Dennis, who was sent a long letter from a Texas prison by an inmate serving seven years for breaking into a woman's house and raping her after threatening to kill her children. Privacy Journal says the letter referred to ``magazines she reads, her interest in physical fitness, the fact she is divorced, her income, and her birthday.'' It included elaborate sexual fantasies involving the specific brand of hand lotion and other personal care products that she uses, and ends ``Maybe later, I can get over to see you.'' The rapist is currently still in prison but is due to be released in 1998. Ms Dennis, who lives alone, has said she is ``terribly frightened.'' [Mother Jones] [ABC News - 1] [2]

The most common form of the trade in junk data is known as renting, sharing, or selling names, but for a few pennies more most companies will sell along with it far more information than just your name and address: your age, income, ethnicity, lifestyle, the names and ages of your children, your coresidents, what you bought and when, which credit card you used, and who you bought it for. According to the New York Times, Metromail (now part of Experian) held ``more than 900 tidbits of Ms. Dennis's life going back to 1987. Laid out on 25 closely printed pages of spreadsheets were not only her income, marital status, hobbies and ailments, but whether she had dentures, the brands of antacid tablets, she had taken, how often she had used room deodorizers, sleeping aids and hemorrhoid remedies.'' (June 12, 1997, p. A30) Companies permanently record and ``share'' every conceivable piece of information about what you have bought, asked about, looked at, sent back, or mentioned in passing, without any restriction on how they can use this information. Floral delivery companies sell the ``occasion,'' disclosing who you are giving flowers on their birthday.

The plummeting costs of data entry, computer processing, storage and communications are making it economical even for small companies of the '90s to record permanently every detail of their interactions with customers for later use and sale. The detailed history of every active consumer that will be built and shared when this information is pooled and bartered using electronic data interchange systems makes some people want to disconnect their telephones and buy everything with cash. Governmental authorities such as tax offices can of course help themselves to this information by buying it, passing laws or obtaining court orders.

Proposed legislation to protect consumer privacy is met with highly effective lobbying by the direct marketing industry, and faces the intrinsic difficulty that people differ in their judgment of what is a reasonable use of data about them. Some shoppers are happy to have their every supermarket purchase recorded and sold, if that lowers their grocery bills. Many gardeners are grateful that their names are shared among companies that offer catalogs of plants and horticultural supplies. But some people feel outraged to discover that so much highly detailed information about them that they consider private is being traded as the property of people they never gave consent to do so, and is too often handled with careless disrespect.

Our initial approach is to give our clients a way of volunteering just as much information on their interests as they wish to let direct marketers know, and to state that no other information should be provided about them without their prior consent.

  Junk Email: A thousand solicitations for the price of a stamp

Until about 1996, cases of ``spamming'' huge numbers of email addresses indiscriminately were fairly rare. Traditional direct marketers still make almost no use of Junk Email (compared to physical mail), especially considering the low cost per message of sending it. However, as large companies set up their telephone service representatives to be able to handle email efficiently, and as a large fraction of the public starts using email, this may change. Meanwhile it's the make-money-fast schemes and peddlers of weight-loss products who pester people with spam. We think they can and should be stopped.

  Junk Hi-tech Messaging: Does the road ahead lead to a world of a billion ghettos?

As a technologically advanced consumer you can look forward to High-tech Junk Communications that give direct marketers unprecedented speed, specificity, frequency and emotional impact. The messages will be individually targeted to be most effective on you, chosen by teams of psychologists and statisticians with ever greater accuracy thanks to the greatly increasing amount of demographic, psychographic and behavioral information collected about you and efficiently traded among direct marketing organizations. Even the information you published years ago on Usenet or the Web will be used to target and persuade you.

Then there are the new means of delivery: junk alphanumeric pages on beepers, advertising displayed by Web browsers and software for reading email, or Instant Messaging systems, AKA SPIM [New Scientist] on personal digital assistants, through Internet broadcasting and micro-targeted interactive television. These technological marvels promise to keep us busy well into the next century.

If the average consumer of the near future lives in a wired junk-bunker, constantly surrounded by precisely the most persuasive messages for him individually, with no control over who sends them and how, what chance does he have of choosing a life other than the one that marketers think they can most easily sell him?

  For junk to prevail, it suffices that consumers do nothing

If you want to do something to avoid being overwhelmed by the ever-increasing flow of junk into your life, we hope you'll find our opt out letters an easy and effective tool to help you gain some control over what's put in your hands, your ears and in front of your face. And what's said behind your back.

Copyright © 1996-2005 Guidescope Inc ®. Copying and distribution permitted under the GNU General Public License. 2005/01/15 http://www.junkbusters.com/variety.html