A Different Kind of Dead Letter Poses a Problem for Advertisers : Mail: Marketers in U.K. hope to eliminate the names of the deceased from their mailing lists.

If you’re dead, don’t read on.

That’s always been a sticky problem confronting junk-mail purveyors, who peddle offerings that range from new cars to dream vacation homes. The trouble is, their mass-mailing lists don’t distinguish the living from the deceased.

Grieving survivors are offended. The senders are embarrassed. Moreover, they’ve wasted postage.

In Britain, where junk mail still is something of a novelty, direct marketers are trying to do something about it. In an effort that could set a precedent for junk mailers elsewhere, they’re seeking government permission to get computer files identifying everyone who dies.

Then they can routinely cleanse their files, leaving only the living.

This will require a change in British law, which now permits inquirers to obtain information on births and deaths only if they ask about people by name. Seeking a wholesale list of everyone who has recently died is forbidden.

The Direct Marketing Assn., a national group of 500 direct mailers, says the extent of the problem remains uncertain. But with around 650,000 Britons dying annually, and 2.5 billion pieces of junk mail going out, an embarrassing overlap is inevitable. It often takes years before the dead can rest in peace.

“We don’t think it happens all that often,” said Colin Fricker, the marketing association’s director of legal affairs.

But it is a big enough concern for the direct marketers, including roughly 100 British insurance companies, that they want to persuade Parliament to change the rules.

“Particularly if they’re offering a pension plan or life insurance, it does cause a certain amount of distress,” Fricker said. “We don’t want to be tarred with that brush.”

Fricker insists the main goal is to avoid hurt feelings. But the direct marketers acknowledge they’ll save money on postage and obtain more valuable customer databases.

Money aside, psychologists agree it’s a good idea to delete the dead from mailing lists. Grieving survivors often find that mail addressed to the dead stirs memories.

“It’s something they probably could do without,” said Prof. John Archer, a bereavement expert who teaches at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston.

Naomi Sollas, a receptionist at the British Geriatrics Society, said she formerly worked at a law firm where one partner died several years ago but kept getting junk mail.

“It wasn’t very nice, seeing a dead person’s name on it,” Sollas said. The direct marketers recognize that if they are going to get lists of the dead, it will raise concerns about how they use this information. Namely, it would be seen as bad taste to target the newly bereaved.

“The same problems arise with the advertising of funeral plans,” said Grahame Fowler, spokesman at the Advertising Standards Authority, which regulates print and poster advertising in Britain.

The sensitivities over this issue appear far more acute in Britain than in the United States, where people receive more than 10 times as much junk mail and there is no organized effort by the senders to weed out the dead.

Moreover, U.S. direct marketers say such a list would be vulnerable to unscrupulous use. So the companies that inundate American households with 526 pieces of mail a year rely on surviving kin to tell them about deaths.

That doesn’t mean Americans aren’t offended when dead relatives receive junk mail. Greg Harper, marketing director for Ross-Simon Jewelers in Cranston, R.I., says he’s fielded many emotional calls from widows and widowers.

“I wish we could get this information in a more timely way,” Harper says. “We’d like to be more proactive, but there are issues of privacy.”