The Baby Mailing Preference Service (BMPS or Baby MPS) allows parents to stop baby-related marketing. The opt-out service was introduced by the Direct Marketing Association in 2002 to enable parents who have suffered a miscarriage or bereavement of a baby in the first week of life to register their wish not to receive baby related mailings. Of course you can also sign up to the service simply because you don't want your newborn to become the target of junk mailers.

The Mailing Preference Service is a free service that can prevent your name is added to junk mail databases. You can also use the service to register a previous occupants' name at your current address.

The Mailing Preference Service will no longer claim the opt-out scheme can remove people's names from up to 95% of direct mail lists. The Direct Marketing Association has agreed the claim was misleading and could not be substantiated.

The Direct Marketing Association is to introduce its own one-point-stop for registering with junk mail opt-out schemes. In the process the Mailing Preference Service may become an opt-in / opt-out scheme.

Consumer Focus has set up a website to help people reduce junk mail and cold calling. Via stayprivate.org people can register with the Mailing Preference Service and Telephone Preference Service in one go.

The Mailing Preference Service, the most used junk mail opt-out scheme in the UK, has told Stop Junk Mail that it will ignore householders requesting an opt-out pack via its Junk Buster website.

A campaign organised by Warwickshire County Council has increased the number of people registered with the Mailing Preference Service in the county to nearly 25%.

Councils in Dorset have joined forces against junk mail. "Although recycling junk mail is better than binning it, the best option is not receiving it in the first place."