
Random Valid US Address - jayess
https://fakena.me/random-real-address/
======
bentpins
Handy.

I'm rather fond of
[http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/](http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/)

It gives names, (probably fake) addresses, credit card numbers, as well as a
bunch else. It allows CSV export if you want up to 50,000 identities
generated. It gives you options regarding the country too.

~~~
iLoch
What are the odds that it gave me the same birth date as my actual birth date?
Month and day, but not year. That's quite the coincidence, though I suspect
it's only something like 1:60.

~~~
bentpins
1/365 I'd think. There are 365 days in a year and it has to match exactly one
day. You might be interested in the Birthday Paradox though
[http://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-the-
birthd...](http://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-the-birthday-
paradox/)

~~~
ryan-c
Birthdays are not uniformly distributed.
[http://www.panix.com/~murphy/bday.html](http://www.panix.com/~murphy/bday.html)

~~~
camkego
Yes, but the probability that it found the same month and day as iLoch's,
depend on the uniformity and independence of the month/day generator, not the
distribution of actual birthdays.

~~~
iLoch
Yeah my guess was based on the birthday paradox. Though now I see that yes the
software probably chose a random number between 1 and 365 so the birthday
paradox wouldn't apply.

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cryptoz
That's neat, but be careful how you use this. Remember that there are real
people living or working at these addresses.

~~~
bigiain
That's partly why my "go to" fake US address is 1060 W Addision, Chicago, IL,
60613.

There's still real people working there, but they've been dealing with this
for 35 years now I suspect:
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080455/quotes?item=qt0320055](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080455/quotes?item=qt0320055)

~~~
nissehulth
I don't need IMDB to know what that is, and I'm not even wearing sunglasses!

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billforsternz
This was fun, the first random dude it came up with for me was an improbably
cool 81 year old (occupation Chef, car 2015 Dodge Charger - not actually an
option in the country he's located but still, cool car).

This could be used to generate test data. I hope nobody would be tempted to
use it for dubious purposes of any kind.

Edit: Oooo, another legitimate use occurs to me - help generate story ideas
(or at least flesh out fringe characters) for authors.

~~~
soneil
I recently hit an odd accident that turned into a cautionary tale about test
data.

Someone was testing one part of a new ecommerce system, at precisely the same
time someone else was testing another part. No-one noticed until DHL returned
a package that was addressed to the Death Star.

They still charged us shipping, but atleast we didn't have to swallow product
cost too. But it did make me look at "random test data" quite differently.

~~~
eru
Why would you put garbage in your production databases?

~~~
soneil
It wasn't supposed to be production. From what I gather, someone made sure the
queue was empty before witching their component to the live system
temporarily. Someone else managed to get a test order in, in the seconds
between the check and the switch.

------
jordanpg
Add random errors to this, and you have the perfect way to test a universal
address parser.

~~~
vortico
This is the only valid/legal/moral use case I can imagine for this project,
but a good one.

~~~
mangeletti
What if you wanted to create an app that allows people to "crowd-fund" gifts
to be mailed to random residential addresses with a note inside that contains
a unique URL that the person can enter into their browser to visit a page
explaining the gift and offering them a way to say thank you to all the
givers?

~~~
derefr
Most addresses aren't households; of the ones that are, a great number of
those aren't currently inhabited. A lot of packages would be sitting at the
doorsteps of new townhouse developments or vacant apartments.

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wodenokoto
Instead of calling it a "valid" address, you should call it an "actual"
address.

I thought at first this would generate real looking addresses that would pass
automatic validation, but not actually be anywhere.

This is quite different!

~~~
chipsambos
I think it's fine. Well, "validity" is contextually sensitive of course. For
example, if I want to test addresses against a regex I'm developing then, yes,
they are valid but if I want to test my mapping application that geocodes
addresses then made up addresses are "invalid".

Since the whole point of an address is that it resolves to a particular
geographical location then I would have expected a "Random Valid US Address"
to be able to be geocoded.

~~~
wodenokoto
The same can be said about credit card or social security numbers - that they
should validate to actual cards/people, yet a generator would be expected to
not do that, but only produce series that match validation criteria.

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userbinator
Incidentally, Fakena is the name of a tiny village in Burkina Faso, Africa.

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mindcrime
In a similar vein:

[https://github.com/mindcrime/DummyDataGenerator](https://github.com/mindcrime/DummyDataGenerator)

Generates names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, etc. But the
addresses are _not_ guaranteed to be valid, although many of them will be by
happenstance. Same for phone numbers.. some will be valid by chance, but may
will not. The emails generated by this program, OTOH, are most definitely
guaranteed to _not_ be valid, since they all use @example.com to prevent
accidental spamming.

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johansch
1st hit: a church

2nd hit: some normal-looking house

3rd hit: a church

Are there more churches than homes in the US? :)

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whitehat2k9
How does this work? Where are the addresses pulled from?

~~~
iso8859-1
You can get addresses from Google if you supply the coordinates. I don't know
if this is how they do it, but it would be easy.

~~~
mholt
Google has false positives on addresses all the time. (What you say is true,
though, but also goes against their ToS to build up a list like this.)

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kennydude
I use [https://randomuser.me/](https://randomuser.me/) which gives me faces as
well as everything else. Also the API lets me pick a nationality which is neat
(for some reason not on the website it seems)

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bshimmin
The passwords it generates (from this page:
[https://fakena.me/random/](https://fakena.me/random/)) are totally
unrealistic. Better would be "qwerty12345" and "footba11"!

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mholt
Was shown this address but it isn't valid:

    
    
        C/o Wlrk 51 West 52nd Street
        New York, NY 10019-0000
    

Curious where the data comes from. The USPS reserves almost all rights on
addresses and only releases them to licensed vendors for certain uses, and I
doubt this is one of them.

Even licensed vendors don't get the full list, they get an encrypted database
of the address and a C library with which to query it. (Source: I worked for
such a vendor and wrote code to interface with said C library.)

~~~
DannyBee
Getting a really large list of valid residential addresses in the united
states is 100% completely trivial.

For example, all the registered voter databases are for sale or free (though
generally only allowed to be used for "political purposes", and not
"commercial purposes", if you get them from the state themselves).

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gott
Here is the german edition.. also with credit card numbers, Bank account and
ID no. They are all real, cvv does not match and they are randomized off
course.. Cheers! [http://fake-it.biz/](http://fake-it.biz/)

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Gladdyu
I can imagine that you'd run into all kinds of legal issues when you use the
address of some unknowing stranger as your own for whatever, probably not the
most trustworthy, purpose.

Would not use.

~~~
simoncion
I _think_ that in every case where you're _not_ entering into an agreement
where you assert that

1) The physical address provided is an address at which you can receive
correspondence or packages.

and

2) The information supplied is -to the best of your knowledge- correct.

and

3) You agree if you _have_ knowingly supplied false or incorrect information,
you will be subject to penalties or damages claims.

you'll be just fine.

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ErikAugust
4 Yawkey Way Boston, MA 02215

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sanjaynegi89
Cool.

