Sick and tired of opening your mail box just to see junk mail smashed inside? Do you ever wonder if you have accidentally thrown away important correspondence, just because of all the junk mail you receive every day? Or maybe you just want to stop killing a couple trees a year and do your part to help out the environment. If you are having any of these issues with unwanted junk mail, the PaperKarma app might just be your solution.

The guys over at PaperKarma have developed an easy to use application, that is available for free in the iTunes App Store, Android Market, and the Windows Marketplace (see below for links).

According to PapperKarma’s website, all you have to do is “Simply take snapshots of your >paper< Junk Mail, press Send and voila... you'll be unsubscribed from the sender automatically.”

PaperKarma can help you relieve you and your mailbox from junk mail such as magazines, catalogs, flyers, credit card offers, white / yellow pages, and local advertisers. As long as there is a "customer list" with your name on it, PaperKarma will try and get the company to remove you from their mailing list. But before you can actually take the pictures of your junk mail, you will have to do a couple of things to set up the app.

Once you have download the free PaperKarma app onto your smartphone device, you will first have to register some of your personal information. The information you need to provide is your name and address (as it appears on the mailing label), and your phone number, if you want to unsubscribe to Yellow Pages and other services that use your phone number (this last one is optional). After the initial registration is done, you will not have to provide this information again.

Now that you have the important part out of the way, here comes the fun part! All you have to do now is wait for the villains to reach your mail box. Once you receive junk mail, whip out your mobile device, open the PaperKarma app, and snap some pictures of the companies name and address.



You will not have to take any pictures of your personal information, such as your name and address, since you already have that info saved in the app. “When taking pictures, please include just the name of the publication/company such that it can be uniquely identified - we do not need your name/address in the picture”.

Now that you have sent the pictures over to PaperKarma, they will contact the companies automatically and try to remove your name from their mailing lists. Just remember companies usually pre-print their mail, so it can take up to a few months for your address to fully exit their mailing systems.

Unfortunately, certain types of junk mail don’t have an actual mailing list to be removed from. These types of junk mail ads “carpet-bomb” entire postal zip codes or mail routes. Those types of unwanted mail are a little harder to nip in the butt, since you can’t ask to be removed from a certain mailing list.

In those type of situations PaperKarma suggests to “get in touch with any company that refuses your requests and give them a piece of your mind! Let them know you don't want paper mail, remind them of how they're damaging the environment, and ask them to maintain a customer suppression list.”

For now, PaperKarma is only available in the US. Hopefully this awsome junk mail service will be extended to other parts of the world in the near future.

Let us know your experience with the PaperKarma app. Were you able to give your mailbox some breathing room? Is this type of app something you have been looking for? Did you download the app? Do you have any interesting stories that have to do with junk mail? Leave us your thoughts down below.

The PaperKarma Application is available for free, so go ahead and click on any of the links below to download:

• PaperKarma from the Apple AppStore
• PaperKarma from the Android Market
• PaperKarma from the Windows MarketPlace

Source: PaperKarma

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