I redirected these to my spam box after at least 60% of the e-mails I received had no image and the text "A piece of mail that we do not have for is included in today's mail".
Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
51–60 of 201 posts
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#52Wasn't there a similar thread on HN a couple months ago about this? I remember commenting about the privacy issues, etc. and was told that USPS is really taking digital images of all the mail, and this is simply offering that as a service. There was a link to support that comment as well.
That is, if you're concern about your gov monitoring your mail, that genie is out of the bottle and ain't never going back.
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#53If you sell your house, USPS has no way to know and they keep sending you the emails for your old residence. So now there's no way when you move into a new residence of knowing whether someone else is snooping on your email.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. When I filed my change of address/mail forwarding, they sent me an email saying that Informed Delivery was suspended on my old address and then they also sent a letter to the old address which was forwarded to the new address which basically said the same thing.
I guess if you don’t file change of address then they won’t know.
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#54Wasn't there a similar thread on HN a couple months ago about this? I remember commenting about the privacy issues, etc. and was told that USPS is really taking digital images of all the mail, and this is simply offering that as a service. There was a link to support that comment as well. That is, if you're concern about your gov monitoring your mail, that genie is out of the bottle and ain't never going back.
The biggest privacy issue I can imagine here is if you see someone else's mail through the portal. A few anecdotes about this happening in the comments are concerning, but I was already under the impression USPS was doing some sort of digital imaging and OCR to efficiently sort the mail so my impression is this just gives you the ability to see those images.
Am I missing something?
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#55You mean to tell me I can get a daily spam message showing me previews of all the spam coming to my physical inbox?
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#56I tried signing up for this 3 months ago, and was shocked to receive images for the mail of literally everyone in my building (I'm one of seven apartments). Huuuge privacy violation. (It's just images of the envelopes, but that still tells you a lot.) I unsubscribed and then went to file feedback, and got an immediate reply explaining this was by design : > Thank you for participating in Informed Delivery®. You recen…
It sounds like they are saying it is not by design, but a mistake that they allowed you to sign up when your location isn't yet meeting the requirements.
At least that is how I read the line about "unable to offer[...]until the coding is complete".
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#57If you sell your house, USPS has no way to know and they keep sending you the emails for your old residence. So now there's no way when you move into a new residence of knowing whether someone else is snooping on your email.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. When I filed my change of address/mail forwarding, they sent me an email saying that Informed Delivery was suspended on my old address and then they also sent a letter to the old address which was forwarded to the new address which basically said the same thing. I guess if you don’t file change of address then they won’t know.
I did file a change address a year ago and yet continued to receive the emails from my previous address. As mentioned in my reply to another comment, I tried unsuccessfully to convince them that this was a problem, and they told me it was my responsibility to also discontinue the emails.
Perhaps they have changed their position in the last year.
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#58Wasn't there a similar thread on HN a couple months ago about this? I remember commenting about the privacy issues, etc. and was told that USPS is really taking digital images of all the mail, and this is simply offering that as a service. There was a link to support that comment as well. That is, if you're concern about your gov monitoring your mail, that genie is out of the bottle and ain't never going back.
They’ve been doing that for years though. I remember a NYT article from over a decade ago about the women who sit at computers and look at images of USPS mail all day, every day, trying to interpret hand-written names and addresses.
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#59This is still a security concern. I live in a building in NYC with a shared mailbox for both apartments. I can see every piece of mail my neighbor gets. Granted, I see this when I open the mailbox, but having a digital record of it in inherently insecure email is a bit concerning.
Email aspect aside, if you have a shared mailbox it’s actually not inherently any less secure... you could be taking a picture of every piece of mail every day anyway. Their privacy isn’t really being violated any more or less than it already was.
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
The government can already open your non-first class mail without a warrant, and if its first class mail, I'm not convinced it'll be hard to get a warrant. The problem with commercial mail processors is that you can't forward mail out from them like you can with a PO box or other traditional address. So if you get an address from one of them, and then either change providers or they go out of business, you're SOL. Th…
>The government can already open your non-first class mail without a warrant, and if its first class mail, I'm not convinced it'll be hard to get a warrant. But IIRC first class mail travels rather quickly. Now you need a warrant for the apartment/house because it was delivered before a warrant could be written. Much harder to get.
If it’s anything like the FISA court that’s not true at all...