Chapter 7. Buy Now!

Robert Ellis Smith, publisher of the Privacy Journal, was at a conference in New York City where he came face to face with the vice president of one of America's largest marketing firms. The man was indirectly responsible for flooding American homes with billions of unwanted letters and postcards every week. So Smith asked the vice president what Americans could do to help stop the torrent of junk mail they face every day.

"There is no such thing as junk mail—just junk people," the vice president corrected Smith, who was astonished by both the candor and the callousness of the remark.