
Ask HN: What's the best privacy-minded virtual mailbox? - auslegung
I&#x27;m moving to another country for 2 years. I don&#x27;t want to forward my mail to a friend or family member and expect them to sort through all my mail all the time.<p>I&#x27;d feel better if the service was open source and used encryption. I prefer open source because I just think it&#x27;s better, not because I want a self-hosting option.
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wsh
I can’t recommend a specific service to receive and scan mail, but if I were
choosing one, I’d be more concerned about the integrity of its employees, its
reliability and longevity, and its compliance with postal regulations (e.g.,
in the U.S., requiring every customer to submit PS Form 1583, _Application for
Delivery of Mail Through Agent_ ) than with the availability of source code
for its software or its use of cryptography. You don’t want to lose mail or
have to change your address if the service loses its lease, goes out of
business, is closed by the Postal Service, or has its premises or data seized
because another customer is suspected of criminal activity.

As for privacy, you could have the service discard the junk and forward the
remaining mail to you unopened, so its employees never see the contents and
don’t create scans that might be considered business records subject to
subpoena. Remember, too, that the U.S. Postal Service already images the
outside of most letter-sized mailpieces, originally for OCR technology
development and security reasons, and now also to provide the Informed
Delivery service.

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auslegung
Good points, thanks!

When you say

> Remember, too, that the U.S. Postal Service already images the outside of
> most letter-sized mailpieces...

are you indicating that the USPS offers a similar service, but only scans the
envelope? Or just reminding me that my mail is already scanned and therefore
less ephemeral than I’d like?

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wsh
You’re welcome. As for your questions, more the latter: with Informed
Delivery, you can see the images, but the mail is delivered as usual, and you
don’t get a virtual address.

