There's a new feature they just rolled out that emails you images of the mail whenever it comes. Just as little security. You can spy on someone's mail indefinitely and they'd be none the wiser.
Imagine how terrible GMail's spam filters would be if spammers paid Google for delivery... Oh wait, Google literally has a dedicated tab for that! For those that find it useful (and I don't doubt it is), imagine what the alternative would be for the spammers, you'd be 100% ignoring it by unsubscribing or filtering it as spam. Now that it's corralled off, you can look at it at your leisure, and Google can keep advertisers happy by offering them a non-zero chance you'll look at their spam.
I mean, ok so USPS is getting $5/mo for my address from a dozen companies. Can I just pay them that $5? Not today.
I'd be happy to open the discussion on opting out of the junk mail without going to a costly service like earth-class mail.
Once it's in my mailbox, what can I do, drop it on the ground? That's littering and a crime. Leave it in my mailbox? I tried that and the mailman eventually stuck a Post-It note on my box saying I wasn't allowed to do that.
So I'm in some sort of weird uncontracted relationship wherein I must ferry a bunch of paper from my box to the recycling bin.
I tried this with a twist, I wrote "return to sender" on it. Mail(wo)man also said "you cannot do this."
I'm curious if there's a list of things like this that the USPS explicitly does not allow..
1. Open the envelope and look for a pre-franked reply envelope. If there is one, stuff the junk into that and post it. Extra revenue for the postal service.
2. If it is a really persistent and annoying sender, mutilate my address and post it. This should result in it being routed back to the sender but does impose extra work on the postal service.
Sadly, I think the USPS now refuses to deliver those, after a rash of people taping return envelopes to cinder blocks a few decades back.
I used to do that until the mailman decided I didn't live here anymore...twice.
Now I apparently don't have a mailing address though the only bill I could never successfully get converted to all electronic (not from lack of trying) is the power company which messes them up every so often getting their bills returned every month.
I'll give you my two big complaints:
1) The time delay. My Traveling Mailbox address is in the western half of the US. Mail has to be delivered to that address, then shipped cross country to North Carolina where their headquarters and mail scanner is. You can count on an additional 3 to 14 days after USPS thinks the mail has been delivered before a scan of it shows up in my email inbox. A couple years ago, this was much worse and less consistent; occasionally letters were 3 weeks late. However in the past 2 years or so, I've noticed the time delay has been much more consistent, centering around 3-5 business days. They maintain addresses all over the country, and there's probably only the scale and margin to maintain one scanning facility, so I don't know what TM could realistically do to address this problem. If I didn't need an address where I have it, I would have already moved my address to Sanford, NC, where their headquarters is.
2) Some banks don't like the address. Due to KYC laws, banks and financial institutions need a residential address for their clients. I'm homeless and don't have such an address, so this is difficult for me. Traveling Mailbox is nice in that they give you a street address, not a P.O. Box. To a casual glance, it looks like a normal street address, but if one researches the address online, one will find that it's a business. When I changed my address over to use my TM address as my home address, about half the financial institutions I worked with rejected the address as not being my residence and said they couldn't do business with me anymore. Some asked for a driver's license as proof of the address. I said no problem and faxed my driver's license (which has my TM address), but the institutions still closed my account without further explanation. I'm still a little salty about the hubris of the politicians who enacted the KYC laws, assuming that everybody conforms and has a permanent residential address.
Edit: It should be obvious that you could do this with physical mail too.
The problem I see is that the processing and bandwidth used by advertising are currently "as much as advertisers can get away with" and I think it's leading to a tragedy of the commons.
But I see no need to eliminate ads and free services either. There just needs to be a cap enforced on the resources used.
I've tried to get it fixed online, but so far no results.