Online services let cities bypass the mailbox
“Last week, the city of San Francisco sent its first letter to residents using Zumbox, a secure e-mail service that allows senders to contact people online using their street address, which regular e-mail doesn’t do.
If the experiment catches on with even a fraction of the population, San Francisco could save a chunk of the $3 million it spent last fiscal year on postage and associated labor costs. Although the service typically costs 5 cents per e-mail, Zumbox is not charging the city.”
What’s odd is that it recreates all the trouble regular mail forwarding causes- the new tenant gets and tosses your mail because it’s sent to an address. Regular email follows you, but this half-and-half system won’t.
Plus, it looks like Zumbox will let anyone spam all mailboxes in any area for 5cents per item. So you will get much more junk mail than you do now at postal rates.
An invention we didn’t need. I just hope it never catches on enough to bother with.