USPS 'Informed Address' Pilot

usps.com

12 points·slater··4 comments

Name and address replaced with some 16 digit alphanumeric.

If it's persistent, it's not going to be blind for long.

if its mutable, and multiple of these IDs map to the same physical address, that will be an even bigger adventure for the carriers delivering the mail. Possibly the big regional sorting facilities that do the barcodes will be adding "real" address labels to provide that mapping? Only think I can think of immediately that might work.

Well, the technology exists to "decode" these addresses at the point of delivery. Assuming that the sorting facility bundled the mail in the order of the driver's route, you'd probably be able to make this work from the delivery point of view. I mean, UPS/Fedex/Amazon already have boxes and such sorted by route delivery with a device telling them what to deliver, etc.

I'm more concerned that when an envelope shows up in my mailbox, that I don't know if it's addressed to me or my neighbor. I often end up with the wrong mail in my box, and I just do the nice thing of: a) not opening the mail; b) walking it over to my neighbor's box and placing it there.

With this, I presumably won't necessarily know my neighbor's obfuscated mailbox and would end up having to open the mail in order to determine if I'm the intended recipient. Forwarded mail will also be hard or impossible with this scheme, as well.

FAQ says the pilot started "in Northern Virginia in February 2020". Has there been an update?

Very cool. I can’t wait to try this myself.

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