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Comment by chrsstrm | Hacker News Reader

That's got me thinking... I wonder if you could use that as the name (current resident) in the USPS forwarding services found online? You would only need a throwaway email address to create an account and set it up. This might merit a test.

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Why would you want to do that?

The poster is saying to route that mail elsewhere.

For me, I'd route it to my old address.

I dislike the current resident there anyway.

Exploiting the online tools to re-route unwanted spam would only work for mail that has paid postage and been processed through the system. If you're using Informed Delivery you'll see that most of the "current resident" spam doesn't appear in your digest because it hasn't actually been mailed (it's placed in your box by the postal carrier directly). Would a named re-route hack work on the processed spam? I say 60/40 in favor of yes, until they catch on. Lots of magazines and catalogues tack on "or current resident" after the name and if the USPS routing regex is not too strict you'll either be able send all your Sears catalogues to Abu Dhabi or you'll discover an un-handled edge case and break your mail. Either way, sounds fun.

Wow, that's incredibly informative. Thank you.

I don't understand the part where you mention the carrier directly placing mail without it being processed.

Why does that happen? How does that work? The carrier gives that to all mailboxes?

USPS sells their own direct mail service [0]. The carrier has a stack of fliers or cards or whatever it is you ordered and they just put one in each box. Pretty sure you can target down certain neighborhoods. I think they also offer printing for complete full service.

[0] https://www.usps.com/business/every-door-direct-mail.htm

Forward them away from your address, thus removing the need to throw them away yourself.

Are those services free in the US? In Canada forwarding costs quite a bit.

Yes. Free via USPS.

USPS has put almost all of their available services online for free and made them very easy to use (and they have also placed self-service smart kiosks in most post offices which are just great too).

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