Reading Your Postal Mail Online

An anonymous reader writes "Remote Control Mail gives us one more reason not to leave our computers. Their service lets you access your postal mail on the Web. They offer scanning of mail contents, shredding, recycling and shipping. There's a good writeup on Techcrunch, complete with a CAD animation showing some robotics technology (Flash Movie) that RCM is developing to automate mail handling. The service costs $25 to get started and $20 a month for individuals." Now if we could only reply the same way.

wait till NetFlix hears about this!

This is very cool! But I'm not sure what NetFlix and Blockbuster (among others) are going to think about this! Finally, an easy way to get DVD's onto my computer!

Doubleplusgood!

And we all know that our mail contents will be kept 100% private.

Snail mail is the ONLY private form of communications we have left.

Re:Doubleplusgood!

You think they don't open letters sometimes?

Re:Doubleplusgood!

Snail mail is the ONLY private form of communications we have left.

Until of course someone steals your mail, reads through it all, and steals your identity. But hey, at least it keeps the crystal meth users [msn.com] busy. If someone wants to steal your mail, they'll find a way.

Also, Doubleplusgood? How do you equate the police of the Ministry of Love reading messages specifically looking for "crimes" against Big Brother, with automated document scanning by a private company that you hire? There are plenty of times when 1984 references are on target, but this doesn't seem to be one of them.....

Re:Doubleplusgood!

Snail mail would be private if it got to the desired recipient 100% of the time. About 1/2 of my mail ends up in a neighbor's mailbox (and vice versa). I can't tell you how many times I've had an important bill (such as property tax) delivered by a neighbor who accidentally received it. Every time we call the post office, they ask us to file a report (which we do), but nothing changes. Luckily we live in a pretty trustworthy neighborhood, or I'd be in trouble.

Does anybody have tinfoil hat instructions

Normally I'm not a super-huge privacy advocate, but something about this makes me a bit uncomfortable.

Re:Does anybody have tinfoil hat instructions

Errr... all of your postal mail is already routinely handled not only mechanically, but by real live people.

Excellent

Hopefully this idea will prompt the companies that still send out bills by post to reconsider this pointless waste of money/paper/time. Then this service will eventually become redundant, but will have served its purpose.

Re:Excellent

With few exceptions (Taxes are the only thing that comes to mind), I can get all of my statements paper free. This includes Credit Card, Cable, Phone, Gas, Electricity. In fact, they would prefer (and push) the electronic methods of receiving your bill. Some people (me included) just prefer paper bills. An easy to store and reference method of your account history.

-dave

Shredding Is Now Easier

I bought a new shredder [fellowes.com] a few months back (thanks for the bargain, eBay). It's powerful enough to shred the whole envelope and its contents without opening, even with those fake credit cards inside. Junk mail management is now so much easier.

There's some sort of loop involved...

There's some sort of pointless loop involved if all I use this service for is to read my paper-mailed ISP and "Remote Control Mail" bills online. A veritable Mobius-strip of "what the hell FOR???!?!?".

Reply online too!

> Now if we could only reply the same way.

You can, with USPS's (US Postal Service) NetPost service [usps.com]

Extra services

For an extra $3 a month we can tell your creditors to bite you.

For another $5 we can break up with your scary ex for you.

And for an extra $10 a month we can forward your up coming invitation to visit Iraq from your Uncle Sam to an address in Canada.

I'm in favor

I think this is a brilliant idea. I'll be perfectly safe from all those angry letter bombs I'm sent...

Do they have a form of penalty system if your mail blows-up the shredder?

Non-letter contents

But if someone mails me anthrax, will they convert it to a Outlook macro for me?

If my gf sends me panties, will someone sniff it for me?

When the brother of the ex-president of Nigeria sends me his check, will they PayPal it to me?

See, unless it does all the things I use my snail mail for, it's useless to me.

And why did I want this ?

Let's see. When I get postal mail now, I:

1. Get it from the mail box
2. Open it
3. Read it

With this service, I would:

1. Get it from the server
2. Open it
3. Read it
4. Pay $20 per month

BRILLIANT ! Where do I sign?

More seriously, I can see that this might appeal to people who travel a lot, but for everyone else ?

Other variations have been around a while.

An interesting example is Anybill.com [anybill.com], which runs a service handling accounts payable for you. Basically, you have your company's invoices sent to their postal address, and they open them and do some data entry and document scanning. You get e-mail whenever stuff lands there, and surf to their web app to review and authorize payment of the bills (some of which get paid electronically, some by having checks sent out on your behalf, as appropriate).

This sort of service-economy stuff is popping up in lots of little corners. If you're an office-less operation (say, a consulting group that work from the road or from your home[s]), it's pretty appealing. But yes, you've got to really trust all the players. But it does (gaa!) help you to "concentrate on your core competancies," assuming that dealing with the physical paperwork of billpaying isn't one of them.

Missing the Point

One of the great things about snail mail for me is the physicality. For personal letters nothing beats having something that your correspondent spent time with.

Of course for things like junk mail I'd much prefer it not be sent at all, but I'm happy to take the junk if it means being able to hold an occasional letter from an old friend or family member. To read it scanned on a screen would seem so wrong.

Oh my goodness, the fine print

um, it might LOOK like $20 a month, but keep reading. The price schedule has ten dense footnotes!

http://www.remotecontrolmail.com/pricing.php [remotecontrolmail.com]

Gotta learn all about mail induction, flats, storage days, document prep fees charged by the minute but billed by the second, the assumption that eveyr piece of mail weighs a minimum of one ounce for shredding-weight-per-day calculations.

omfg

Thanks but I'll wait til I can figure out if this will cost $20 or $200 per month since I have no control over my inbound mail.

Unopened mail may not necessarily be secure today.

If I were Big Brother, I'd send each piece of mail past an extremely bright lamp, such as a projector lamp, and photograph it from the other side. Reading it would basically be text recognition, but with the added twist that the text to be parsed is overlaid in thirds, with the mailing address superimposed on top. Reading every letter might be beyond the power of even the best text recognition software running on the fastest computers, but the images could be saved until text recognition *is* powerful enough to do that.

Conclusion: Although the system in TFA does none of this, it still wouldn't hurt to assume that snail mail is *not* secure.

Old news in Europe

In Portugal, where I live, this service is already provided by the postal office... for free!