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Comment by gergles | Hacker News Reader

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 contact them and demand they stop mailing to my address, but this is a slow process. (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!")

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> (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.

Do you have a source for them selling that information?

It’s sort of a futile gesture, as DMV sells a real-time feed to multiple parties.

> 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).

When I lived in Seattle's Central District, my local Post Office branch had a drop box in the lobby for any mail you received that was addressed to previous residents. I used to collect anything that seemed important and I would drop it off periodically. This is not something I've seen at many other Post Offices, curiously.

Interesting. We've got one labeled for misfiled mail. I'm not sure what happens if you drop mail in there that was for a previous owner of your PO box.

Speaking of misfiles, I've got a PO box in Poulsbo, WA, 98370. I received a letter that was address to that box number...but in Cleveland, TN, 37320.

How the heck could a letter end up that far off? The label was printed, not handwritten, and the printer wasn't running out of ink or skipping or anything like that. There is nothing whatsoever unclear about it, so no way was it a reading error.

Get one of these, stamp everything that isn’t addressed to you and throw it back in the box:

Return to Sender Not at This Address Self Inking Rubber Stamp (Red Ink) - Large https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0745432KW/

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