Why You Can't Opt Out of EDDM Junk Mail

Is there really no way to opt out of EDDM?

Not for a household. There is no registry to join, no USPS form to file and no setting at the post office. EDDM is built that way: an advertiser pays to reach every address on a carrier route, using no names and no mailing list, so there is no list to take you off.

What exists is narrower, and it belongs to the advertiser. Since 2008 on rural routes, and since 2011 on city routes, USPS has let mailers exclude the addresses of people who asked them to stop. Its instructions for EDDM advertisers still say so today.

Who decides what goes in my mailbox?

The Postal Service, under rules you accept by putting up a mailbox. A 1934 law, 18 U.S.C. 1725, makes it a federal offense, punishable by a fine, to leave unstamped “circulars, sale bills, or other like matter” in a mailbox to avoid postage. USPS rules go further: a mailbox “may be used only for matter bearing postage.” Congress passed the law to protect postal revenue, according to a 1997 GAO review.

The Supreme Court upheld the arrangement in 1981, in U.S. Postal Service v. Council of Greenburgh Civic Associations. You pay for the box, the Court said, but you agree “to abide by the Postal Service's regulations in exchange for the Postal Service agreeing to deliver and pick up” your mail. The Court also noted the exit: nobody is required to get mail at home, and anyone can do without it “by simply failing to provide the receptacle.”

So the mailbox law does not force EDDM on you by itself. It keeps everyone else out and puts the Postal Service's delivery rules in charge, and those rules give households no way to turn saturation mail off. The statute and the court case, in detail.

Can I refuse mail addressed to “Postal Customer”?

You can, but it accomplishes nothing. USPS rules let you refuse a piece when it is offered, or mark it “Refused” and return it unopened. Mail with a simplified address is not sent back, though: undeliverable pieces addressed to “Postal Customer” are “disposed of as waste.” The advertiser never learns you refused it, and next week's flyer still comes.

The address line is the reason. EDDM uses USPS's simplified address format, a generic line such as “Postal Customer,” “Local Postal Customer” or “Residential Customer” in place of a name and street, and USPS rules send it to all deliveries on the route. Mail addressed to “Current Resident” or “Occupant” is different: it carries your street address, comes from a list, and can usually be stopped (how to tell the two apart).

Why is there no Do Not Mail registry?

Because Congress has never created one, and the states that tried did not succeed. Phones got the National Do Not Call Registry from the Federal Trade Commission in 2003. Commercial email has to explain how to opt out, and senders must honor the request within 10 business days, under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Advertising mail has no general equivalent (how mail compares with phones, email and fax).

In 2007 and 2008, at least 19 state legislatures introduced bills to create Do Not Mail registries, and none became law, the Congressional Research Service found. The mailing industry organized against them through a coalition called Mail Moves America, and the Postmaster General told a Senate subcommittee in March 2008 that the bills threatened “the viability of the mail.” USPS estimated that registries in every state could cost it $4 billion to $10 billion a year in revenue if half to all consumers signed up, an estimate CRS noted did not subtract the delivery costs USPS would save.

What the voluntary opt-out lists cover, and the push for a Do Not Mail registry.

Why doesn't the Postal Service offer an opt-out?

Nothing requires it to, and advertising is a large part of its business. USPS “generally receives no tax dollars for operating expenses” and lives on postage. Marketing Mail, the class most advertising travels in, was 52% of everything it delivered in fiscal 2025 (56.8 billion of 108.7 billion pieces) and brought in $15.7 billion, about a fifth of its revenue. In 2026 USPS is offering mailers a 30% postage credit for sending more Marketing Mail, saturation mail included.

EDDM itself is a small slice: about $617 million in fiscal 2025, roughly 0.8% of USPS's $80.5 billion in operating revenue. An opt-out used only by the households that want one would touch a fraction of that. The agency that would have to create the opt-out is the same one that sells the postage. Does EDDM keep the Postal Service afloat? The numbers.

Doesn't Rowan v. Post Office let me block junk mail?

Only in a narrow way. In Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Department (1970), the Supreme Court upheld a 1967 law, now 39 U.S.C. 3008, that lets a householder who receives an ad they consider “erotically arousing or sexually provocative” get a Postal Service order telling that mailer to stop sending them anything. The Court left that judgment to the householder alone, who “may prohibit the mailing of a dry goods catalog because he objects to the contents.” Its reasoning, that “a mailer's right to communicate must stop at the mailbox of an unreceptive addressee,” is the same principle an EDDM opt-out would rest on.

As a tool, though, it is narrow. Each order runs against one mailer. The application, PS Form 1500, must come with the original piece, opened. And the order covers only the people named in it, while EDDM pieces name no one. We found no record of a prohibitory order being used against an EDDM sender. How prohibitory orders work.

Does DMAchoice stop EDDM?

No. DMAchoice, a mail preference service now offered by the ANA (Association of National Advertisers), passes your name and address to the companies that subscribe to it, which drop you from their prospect mailings. EDDM uses no list, and DMAchoice says so in its own FAQ: its opt-out, “which uses both name and address for suppression will not work to stop EDDM mailings.”

It once tried. In August 2012 the Direct Marketing Association added a voluntary EDDM opt-out to DMAchoice that passed opted-out addresses to advertisers for their facing slips, if the advertisers chose to use it. That form no longer exists. DMAchoice still helps with addressed advertising, for $8 online (10 years), along with the free opt-outs that work.

Do other countries let households opt out?

Yes. Several let households refuse unaddressed advertising, and in Canada the national postal operator honors the request itself.

What would it take to get an opt-out?

A decision by the Postal Service, or a law that requires one. USPS already skips addresses that advertisers list as Do Not Deliver. What is missing is a way for a household to ask once, instead of tracking down every sender. That is what the petition asks the Postal Service to create. What could change, from USPS rules to bills in Congress and the states.