Of course, if you don't sign up, make sure you DO opt out of Informed Delivery. Otherwise someone else may sign up and get copies of all your mail sent to them without your knowledge.
Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
181–190 of 201 posts
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no feedback loop for most mail you don't want. Anything "standard" (or "STD") in the postage area will just be thrown away if you put it back in the mail stream. You'll also have to deal with every catalog being sent to "OR CURRENT RESIDENT". The prior owners of my place still get on average 9-10 pieces of mail a week here, and I just have to throw it all out. If one sender is especially egregious, I will co…
> (The prior owners refused to submit change of address forms, and when I contacted them they specifically said "we get too much junk mail and we want less of it!") I don't submit change of address forms, as the USPS sells the data from those to spammers. I do, however, systematically call and cancel any sources of spam, as well as redirecting any mail I actually want.
> I don't submit change of address forms, as the USPS sells the data from those to spammers.
It may no longer be valid, but at one time there was a hack for this - permanent COAs were sold, on 9-track tape, IIRC, but temporary COAs were not sold, but just kept on file at the local post office, so one could just submit a temp. COA every six months (the maximum duration of a temp. COA).
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#183I 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…
HIPAA violation?
Rule of thumb: if it's not an insurance company or medical facility, HIPAA doesn't apply.
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#184I highly recommend a service like virtualpostmail (there's a few, but this is the one I use). They're a commercial mail receiving service. You get a new address (like a PO, but deliverable by everyone -- though this gets tricky with credit card billing addresses). Once mail gets delivered, you get a scan of the front side. Then you can choose to have it shredded, scanned to PDF or delivered to you. This is great for…
Their pricing seems awfully steep. I could see this service being worth maybe $5/mo, but $30? I can't imagine paying $30/mo just so I don't have to change addresses when I move.
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#185You mean to tell me I can get a daily spam message showing me previews of all the spam coming to my physical inbox?
The funny part is that they don’t scan the kind of spam that is blanketed to your area like grocery store inserts and local gym offers (the stuff that isn’t actually addressed to you). They do still scan the targeted spam like credit card offers and such. They don’t scan magazines either. Just individually addressed envelopes and postcards.
You can opt out of (most of) the prescreened credit card offers: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0148-prescreened-credi...
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#186That’s great, can they now stop selling my mailbox space to advertisers. Incredibly annoying - many government services make it basically mandatory to have a mailing address, and there is now way to stop pounds of junk that land into it on daily basis.
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#187Worth remembering five years ago there was a startup (Outbox) trying to work with the USPS on this with some disruptive features (spam mail removal). USPS killed it: https://www.insidesources.com/outbox-vs-usps-how-the-post-of... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667068 Outbox's shutdown note: http://web.archive.org/web/20140712084627/http://blog.outbox... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7097892
I think spam mail removal is an entirely different beast since USPS makes a lot (maybe even most) of their money off of mail that most people consider spam. It's in USPS's financial interest to deliver as much junk mail to you as possible.
When I tried USPS' informed delivery about a year back, I only emailed me images of spam mail. If it wasn't spam, it went through and showed up in my physical mailbox without me getting a digital image of it first.
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who/what is this? Official USPS service, third party...? It looks either really cool or really sketchy, and I can't tell which.
It is an industry trade group for organizations that use direct mail marketing. It gets mixed reviews, and it's not perfect, but it seems to be basically legitimate. With email spam, costs are so negligible that there's no way it's worth the trouble of removing an address. Every piece of physical mail costs money for printing and postage, so while it's not a big incentive, a cost saving incentive actually does exist.
The other half of the "every piece of mail costs money" coin is to send back every prepaid envelope. What you put in it is up to you, but the thicker and heavier it is the better.
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
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".
> 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. Yeah, IIRC they don't support this feature for PO boxes, but I managed to accidentally get it for mine when I filed a change of address form. I regularly see notifications for mail really indented for a few other PO boxes. It's pretty clear that their automated so…
That's strange, especially since every PO box* is in fact a unique ZIP+4, so more than meets the "unique delivery point" requirement.
For example, the full ZIP+4 of "PO BOX 391234, CAMBRIDGE MA 02139" is "02139-1234".
Re: Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Luckily usps requires all new development to use cluster boxes so that should put an end to it for any new house.
[Citation needed]
https://about.usps.com/postal-bulletin/2018/pb22492/html/upd...
There are exemptions which allow for single mailboxes but going forward all new builds should have cluster boxes.