71–80 of 201 posts
You mean to tell me I can get a daily spam message showing me previews of all the spam coming to my physical inbox?
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How many attackers are local to you? This requires proximity obviously, I just have to think that’s even more rare. Maybe there are niche credit card thieves that like to target just the area they live in. Seems like a lot of additional risk as now you aren’t just committing CC fraud but also mail fraud.
I work in the Credit card industry. Account origination fraud using the real address is a thing. The bad guys hire mules to check mailboxes daily until the card arrives. This would greatly simplify that task.
I 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…
I don't see the privacy violation. The outside of envelopes are publicly viewable by design so that they can be delivered. If you don't want others to know who's mailing you, ask the sender not to place their name and address on the envelope. But the situation isn't hard to understand. The entire building has a single code, and the delivery guy is responsible for inserting mail into the individual lock boxes, and he…
You mean to tell me I can get a daily spam message showing me previews of all the spam coming to my physical inbox?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see the privacy violation. The outside of envelopes are publicly viewable by design so that they can be delivered. If you don't want others to know who's mailing you, ask the sender not to place their name and address on the envelope. But the situation isn't hard to understand. The entire building has a single code, and the delivery guy is responsible for inserting mail into the individual lock boxes, and he…
That's like saying if I send an email via Gmail, Google should feel free to do whatever it wants with the headers, because it's supposed to be publicly viewable so the mail server knows where it should go. (See also the NSA phone call metadata scandal.) In reality, when you send a letter, you are placing it into the care of the postal service. Your letter is only handled by postal employees, and mailbox privacy is co…
Nowhere does it say that post office employees are the only ones who can handle your mail, and in reality the postal service has a ton of contractors that also handle the mail. They do stuff like bulk delivery and OCRing hand written addresses.
A friend of mine contracted with one of the companies that does the hand writing recognition, and if the computers can't recognize an address then a picture of the envelopes get sent off to a team of data entry people who see the address on a screen and type it in by hand.
It's also fairly common for delivery people to screw up and deliver mail to the wrong address, especially in large apartment complexes.
There's also nothing special about postal employees. Why would you trust them more than anybody else? They're bound by the same federal mail tampering laws as everybody else, but nothing above and beyond that.
I 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…
Well... your mail carrier knows about the different addresses. This doesn't mean that the USPS has this information in their system.
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We could argue this all day. Let's not! I'm okay parting with some privacy and security for convenience to avoid losing paper mail, have it returned undeliverable, ease my management of receiving it, etc. It's not for everyone, but for my use cases, I desire it. Provide the service, and I'll be a customer for life. It only takes one lost paper bill or notice to make life painful for a bit.
It's paperless for you, and you only. The paper was still printed, mailed, etc and is therefore still used. This is not a paperless transaction. You want to go paperless, then by all means do that with the actual people sending you things. Once you sign up to go paperless with the place you legitimately need information from, the only thing left is unsolicited mail along with the occasional card/invitation/etc. Accor…
> Oops, then there's jury summons...
Some senders will still only send paper. That is part of what this type of service addresses. I have received grand jury summons via my commercial mail provider turning it into a PDF. Working as intended! No different than a fax to email gateway for senders who can only fax you something (speaking of which, I also get a fax number with the service for inbound faxes dropped in the same interface as scanned mail).
> According to previous HN discussions on cards/invitations, the younger generation doesn't even want those. Those should come from a FB Event notice or similar.
I don't use Facebook, Instagram, Meetup, or other online invite or social services. I still get wedding invites and other personal cards in the mail, from people in their 20s. I receive postcards from friends traveling the world. I receive hand written letters from my grandmother. A friend sends me a favorite candy bar in the mail for my birthday. My commercial mail provider scans the envelope, and then I hit "Forward" (which queues the mail pieces for forwarding), and receive them at my physical location for actioning and sentimental safekeeping.
> Once you sign up to go paperless with the place you legitimately need information from, the only thing left is unsolicited mail along with the occasional card/invitation/etc.
My insurance company still sends policy docs by mail, which I can't opt out of. All of my rental properties still require paper receipt of government correspondence. My health insurance provider. My kid's day care provider. Many, many orgs still send paper mail and won't send an electronic doc instead.
You're waving away valid use cases that will still exist for decades. Not everyone is a tech professional who only needs an email address and a number for SMS.
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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.
If 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see the privacy violation. The outside of envelopes are publicly viewable by design so that they can be delivered. If you don't want others to know who's mailing you, ask the sender not to place their name and address on the envelope. But the situation isn't hard to understand. The entire building has a single code, and the delivery guy is responsible for inserting mail into the individual lock boxes, and he…
That's like saying if I send an email via Gmail, Google should feel free to do whatever it wants with the headers, because it's supposed to be publicly viewable so the mail server knows where it should go. (See also the NSA phone call metadata scandal.) In reality, when you send a letter, you are placing it into the care of the postal service. Your letter is only handled by postal employees, and mailbox privacy is co…