61–70 of 105 posts
Translation: Keeping with our effort to turn this country into more of a Panopticon, and aligned with our belief that no two parties should be able to communicate privately, we hate that you can send mail mostly anonymously, and this gives us a bit more power to surveil you by making stamps unique.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A simple scenario that comes to mind is that given a letter, it's now easier to tie it back to the stamp's point of sale. "Who purchased this stamp?" is a very hard question to answer in their current (essentially fungible) form. Adding barcodes makes this much easier. This assumes that stamps are scanned when sold, to tie their barcodes to the purchaser. That may happen. It may not. But clearly the more scans a stam…
Indeed it assumes the stamps are scanned upon sale. Otherwise, at best, what you obtain is "where was this stamp sold", which is completely non-identifying. But if you think about it for more than ~10 seconds, you remember that stamps are sold in packs of 4-8 at least . They're also often sold in sheets of 50+. All this makes individual scans painful. So you want to play the devil's advocate and make more assumptions…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A simple scenario that comes to mind is that given a letter, it's now easier to tie it back to the stamp's point of sale. "Who purchased this stamp?" is a very hard question to answer in their current (essentially fungible) form. Adding barcodes makes this much easier. This assumes that stamps are scanned when sold, to tie their barcodes to the purchaser. That may happen. It may not. But clearly the more scans a stam…
Indeed it assumes the stamps are scanned upon sale. Otherwise, at best, what you obtain is "where was this stamp sold", which is completely non-identifying. But if you think about it for more than ~10 seconds, you remember that stamps are sold in packs of 4-8 at least . They're also often sold in sheets of 50+. All this makes individual scans painful. So you want to play the devil's advocate and make more assumptions…
If anything all the stamps would have two ID in the barcode. One linked to the sales location (always the same) and one as a counter for the individual stamps. That would avoid having to scan every single one.
Seems very quick deprecation? If they urgently need the barcode why support picture stamps without it. If the don't then supporting both for a year will dramatically reduce the amount of swapping they need to do.
Presumably they would like to go 100% to the new workflow in their sorting centres. A longer swap period means more expensive equipment sat there doing nothing or longer period of time supporting two different workflows.
Also the distribution of stamps held; people who post a lot - 0 swaps needed. People who hoard - have multiple years supply. People who dont post often at all but have stamps sat around - 10 years supply assuming you can find where that 10 pack of stamps is.
6-12 months to restock all outlets and have companies wind down their supplies of old stamps, and a good amount of time to test the new workflow on an increasing volume, while still being able to back off if the system blows up.
There are so many features royal mail could add to letter/parcel delivery that users might want to pay for, and would cost them nothing. Eg. * See what mail is headed your way. They could have email/text/app notifications of mail that's headed towards you, including a picture of the outside of the parcel and estimated delivery dates/times. * The ability for the receiver to pay to prioritize incoming mail. Sometimes y…
Translation: Keeping with our effort to turn this country into more of a Panopticon, and aligned with our belief that no two parties should be able to communicate privately, we hate that you can send mail mostly anonymously, and this gives us a bit more power to surveil you by making stamps unique.
How will the mail become less anonymous by adding a random unique number to it? It's not like you need an ID to buy stamps.
If you buy stamps from a shop, perhaps a register is kept of which stamps were given to which shops.
I don't know how likely any of this is, but it can definitely make stamp purchases more traceable than without the barcodes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're going to make this claim, at least give a reasonable explanation as to how this deanonymisation works. Otherwise your comment is no better than "they're putting microchips in the vaccines" junk.
A simple scenario that comes to mind is that given a letter, it's now easier to tie it back to the stamp's point of sale. "Who purchased this stamp?" is a very hard question to answer in their current (essentially fungible) form. Adding barcodes makes this much easier. This assumes that stamps are scanned when sold, to tie their barcodes to the purchaser. That may happen. It may not. But clearly the more scans a stam…
Not in the FAQ: "If this is so important, why don't these changes apply to special stamps?" and "You're designing new stamps, but you're putting the Late Queen on them, not the new King?"
Not in the FAQ: "If this is so important, why don't these changes apply to special stamps?" and "You're designing new stamps, but you're putting the Late Queen on them, not the new King?"
At the top: > The barcodes will enable exciting new services by connecting physical stamps to the digital world through the Royal Mail app Then in the FAQ > Why are you adding barcodes to stamps? > > The move is part of the Company’s extensive and ongoing modernisation drive and will allow the unique barcodes to facilitate operational efficiencies, enable the introduction of added security features and pave the way f…
I wonder why this is? Surely it would be relatively easy for a counterfeiter to sell them in quantities of 50 instead.