The Data Protection Act 1998 had introduced the right to object. For the first time, you could force individual companies and organisations to stop processing your personal data for "direct marketing purposes". Doing so was a bit of a pain, as you needed to send an official notice in writing. However, it was an improvement. And, at least two commercial opt-out services ran with the idea.

OptOut UK

OptOut UK (optoutuk.com) was launched in 2007 and is the only commercial opt-out service to have survived. That said, the OptOut UK website has largely been abandoned, so it is not quite clear if the opt-out service has indeed survived. But we will get to that. We should start at the beginning.

Initially, OptOut UK enabled users to sent opt-out requests to telemarketers. They added a similar service for addressed junk mail in 2008 but in the early years the focus was very much on stopping spam calls. The home page talked solely about nuisance calls and in 2009 the company started offering a screen calling unit called trueCall (for £97.50), which it claimed was a patented technology (the product disappeared from the website in 2012).

As far as sending data protection notices goes, the website features a lists with over 300 marketers that can be contacted. The list includes the UK's main data broker (Experian), a handful of charities and a somewhat odd mix of companies and other organisations. Many of the companies are well-known brands but somehow the list also includes organisations such as the Financial Ombudsman. For many of the alleged junk mail offenders there is a "DIY option" that takes you to a page about opting out of junk marketing on the marketer's website. You don't have to be logged in (or registered) to browse the catalogue. So, you can use the website to manually send data protection notices to individual senders, for free.

Speaking of "free", for years the website didn't mention anything about fees. You could register for free but to complete the process you would receive a phone call, presumably to encourage you to select a paid plan. Information about pricing was finally added in 2020. There is free plan, which lets you make up to three opt-out requests. To get unfeathered access you need to pay either £5.99 per month or £69.99 per year.

At around 2020 the company also launched an OptOut UK app for Android and iOS, which appears to have been a rather short-lived endeavour. The home page still has links to download the app but they appear to have been removed from the app stores in 2021. In fact, it looks like OptOut UK all but died in late 2021. The company stopped updating its blog and social media accounts and the current home page shows the same fake Trustpilot reviews it did in 2021.

It's My Post

It's My Post (itsmypost.com) launched in 2006, though the website didn't really go live until late in 2008. For the first two years the website was made up of just a home page with a login form, a page with a list of some of the top senders of addressed junk mail and a page with information about the "direct mail" industry. There was no information about who ran the website and whether or not the service on offer was free.

The 2008 version fo the website promised visitors the service allowed you to take control of the junk mail you receive. Like OptOut UK, you could use the website to generate data protection notices (for up to 400 companies). However, the service could not send the notices — you had to do that yourself. Oddly, the How it works page suggested sending the notices via recorded delivery. That would be an unnecessary hassle and expense — it was perfectly fine to sent data protection notices via email (the notices had to be in writing, which could be an email).

It's My Post charged £4.95 per year for its service and, according to the Terms and Conditions, was run by the REaD Group (which has since been bought by Sagacity). At the time, the REaD Group was a major player in the market for data suppression. Among others, they monitised the personal details of people who had died, which is a practice I am hoping to talk about in a future update of the history of junk mail. In any case, the point I want to make is that the service was run by a major player in the "direct marketing" industry. This was not a service that aimed to help you weed out all junk mail once and for all. Instead, it wanted to improve the targeting of "direct mail". According to the website, the average person was interested in only 25 per cent of the advertising mail they received. It's My Post aimed to make it easier do so something about the remaining 75 per cent. It recommended the MPS for people wanting to simply stop all addressed junk mail.

The service never seemed to have gained any traction. The website didn't see any updates until 2013, when the home page was replaced with a notice to say that Its My Post no longer accepted new registrations. The website disappeared without a trace in 2015 has since re-emerged as a spam blog.