Is There a Do Not Mail Registry?

The pattern holds across the table: every service works by matching a name or street address against a mailing list. Every Door Direct Mail has neither, so only the advertiser's own Do Not Deliver list touches it. DMAchoice says so in its FAQ: its opt-out “will not work to stop EDDM mailings.” How to ask an advertiser to stop EDDM.

Is the “National Do Not Mail List” official?

No. The site by that name belongs to DirectMail.com, a direct-marketing company that describes itself as “a licensed data reseller” of mailing lists. Signing up keeps your name off the lists it sells, but the company says it “is not able to forward National Do Not Mail registrations to third party sources.” It is a private list, not a government registry, and it is not new: the Congressional Research Service listed it among private registries in 2008.

Why is there a Do Not Call registry but no Do Not Mail registry?

Because Congress acted on phone calls and never on mail. In 2008 the Congressional Research Service noted that, unlike Do Not Call, “there is neither a federal statute that broadly regulates unsolicited mail through registries nor a federal statute that explicitly allows states to establish their own do not mail registries.” States that try alone run into the Constitution's grant to Congress of the power to establish post offices, which CRS called “perhaps the most formidable obstacle” to state registries.

Free speech is a real hurdle, but not an absolute one. CRS read the court rulings upholding Do Not Call to mean a mail registry “could be crafted to comply with free speech principles,” and the Supreme Court held in 1970 that “a mailer's right to communicate must stop at the mailbox of an unreceptive addressee” (Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Dept.). Design matters, though: in 2012 a federal appeals court struck down Seattle's opt-out registry for Yellow Pages directories, holding that the books were fully protected speech.

Then there is the money. Advertising is the largest category of mail USPS delivers: 52% of everything it carried in fiscal 2025, bringing in $15.7 billion. In 2008 the Postal Service estimated it could lose $4 billion to $10 billion a year if every state created a registry and every consumer signed up, and Postmaster General John Potter told a Senate subcommittee that such initiatives “threaten the viability of the mail.”

Opponents also argued that mail is simply different. “Direct mail is in no way comparable to the unsolicited and invasive telephone calls that are curbed by the ‘Do Not Call’ registry,” Senator Susan Collins told postal supervisors in 2008. The Postal Service's own household survey offers another view: in fiscal 2025, households threw away 39% of their advertising mail without reading it.

Has anyone tried to create a Do Not Mail registry?

Yes, repeatedly. None has become law.

• 1971. The Direct Marketing Association starts its Mail Preference Service, the industry-run list now called DMAchoice.
• 2007 to 2008. At least 19 state legislatures introduce bills to create Do Not Mail registries: Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Washington. None passes, and no federal registry bill is introduced in that Congress.
• 2008. ForestEthics' online petition for a national registry nears 45,000 signatures. In New Hampshire, a committee majority finds the state bill “inexpedient to legislate,” partly because it exempted “saturation mailings that go to every resident along the postal route” and so “would not significantly reduce unwanted mail.”
• 2012. The Ninth Circuit strikes down Seattle's ordinance creating an opt-out registry for Yellow Pages directories (Dex Media West v. City of Seattle).
• 2025 to 2026. New York bills A.9029 and S.9440 would create a statewide “Do Not Disturb Registry” covering calls, email, texts, faxes and physical mail, enforced against senders of more than 5,000 unsolicited mailings a year with fines of up to $1,500 per violation. Both are in committee. Residents would register phone numbers, email and home addresses; the bill does not mention mail with no address on it.

We found no federal Do Not Mail bill in the current Congress.

How do other countries handle unaddressed advertising?

Most don't use a registry at all. They let households say no at the mailbox, with a sticker or a note, and several make distributors honor it. Canada's system is the closest match to EDDM: the national postal operator itself stops delivering unaddressed ads to a household that asks.

What would a U.S. registry need to cover?

The 2008 bills show what to avoid. Each would have compiled residents' names and addresses into a list for marketers to check, a design built for list mailers rather than mail sent to every address on a route. New Hampshire's exempted saturation mail outright, which its own committee said left the bill unable to significantly reduce unwanted mail. A registry that works would need to:

• Cover mail with no name on it. Every Door Direct Mail and other saturation mail have to be included, or the registry misses the mail households can do least about today.
• Use the switch USPS already has. The Do Not Deliver column on the EDDM facing slip shows the Postal Service can already skip one address in a saturation mailing. A household should be able to make that request once, not once per advertiser.
• Be free. The Do Not Call registry costs nothing to join. A Do Not Mail registry shouldn't either.
• Keep sensible exceptions. Canada Post still delivers government and election material to households that refuse unaddressed ads. A U.S. version could do the same.

How can I help create one?

Add your name to the petition. Started in January 2020, it asks the Postal Service for an official way to opt out of Every Door Direct Mail, the one kind of junk mail no private list can reach.