Snail Mail As E-Mail 309
techcon writes "An Australian startup Planetwide has launched an interesting product called Scan Me. The idea is simple, you redirect your snail mail to them and they scan your physical mail and email it all to you as a text searchable PDF. Targeted at the world wide traveller, it also looks like a good way to help prevent identity theft and getting nasty white powder in the mail."
Post offices in Belgium (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Stop identity theft? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Stop identity theft? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, reading it in some internet cafe in Beijing will probably leave it in the temp directory. I really don't think this is a good idea.
Security? (Score:2, Interesting)
Aside from a few (not yet online) bills, the only physical correspondence I receive are things I value for their very physicality -- personal letters, packages, magazines.
I also get junk mail. But as it is seldom addressed specifically to me, I wouldn't think this service would have much of an impact on that... Automated junk mail to spam converter, anyone?
Scanning _and_ forwarding (Score:5, Interesting)
The summary doesn't mention it, but not only do they scan everything you get, they forward it to you once you're somewhere you can receive it, so you still have the paper originals. And for those who are paranoid about having confidential documents sent via E-mail, they let you cut the scanning step out and just treat it as an ordinary forwarding address.
It doesn't say anything about whether they're offering this to people outside of Australia, but it's certainly interesting for those of us who move frequently. I wonder if this will start a "permanent postal address hosting" service genre like Hotmail did with E-mail.
Re:this is dandy but.. (Score:5, Interesting)
CompuServe was offering that service back in 1989. You could send an "e-mail" to a physical address. They would print it out at their office closest to the final destination and stick it in the mail.
It cost something like $1.25 for the first 8x11 sheet and $.15 for each sheet after that.
I remember trying this out and having e-letters delivered from Orlando, FL to places like Kalamazoo, MI and Seattle, WA in 2 days.
I still think this would be a good idea.
How would this work? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Stop identity theft? (Score:3, Interesting)
A close-to minimum-wage labor-intensive job opening your mail and scanning it. What could possibly go wrong?
Re:Scanning _and_ forwarding (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean, like a PO Box? They have been providing that sort of service for a long time. My friend has had the same mailbox rental for 3 years, all the while he's lived in 4 different places.
I don't know where to start... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're using this "Scan Me" service, however, they can intercept your mail once it leaves US Postal Service channels with much lower levels of scrutiny - they'd just need to walk up and ask the nice people at Planetwide to do their civic duty. In fact, if Carnivore is still running (and I'm paranoid enough to believe it might be) then they wouldn't need to contact the Planetwide staff at all. The Feds could just go to Planetwide's ISP and monitor the traffic, reading the information unencrypted as it flies by on the 'Net.
The ACLU can't protect your civil liberties if you are asking third parties to copy all of your private correspondence into the electronic equivalent of postcards. No, scratch that, postcards are still covered by the same Federal laws as normal (sealed) mail. This is copying to postacrds and re-routing through a network of untrusted private couriers. =[
Re:this is dandy but.. (Score:3, Interesting)
That depends on your existing postal service, of course, and whether you're sending internationally or not. In the UK, standard first-class mail is - normally - delivered the next day and costs 28p (42 cents) for an envelope of quite a few normal-weight sheets of paper. Such a service wouldn't find a market here.
As a replacement for air mail, however, it has much greater potential. Delivery from the UK to the US can be up to two weeks - with a service like this there would be no correlation between distances and delivery times.
Stops identity theft? (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides which, the scan process still has to send to the originals to you somewhere - if that place is secure why not send the stuff there in the first place. When I'm overseas I far prefer to have the relatives open anything questionable/official and advise me/handle it themselves.
Re:I use a similar service already (Score:2, Interesting)
English is an old, language built up from many tongues based around Saxon roots with some latin, french and celtic thrown in for good measure.
The US spellings are gradually stripping away the "frenchness" from the language in an attempt to further anglicise the tongue. I for one am proud of the mongrel language we have and think that attempts to "purify it" are akin to language fascism and will ultimately lead to a rigid linguistic structure with no room for growth and change. French is such a tongue and in my opinion their aversion to english-isms in their language is slowly converting a beautiful language into a dead one.
The internet is a great place to see the varieties of use of english and observe its development and constantly evolving vocabulary.
As such i have no direct objections to "American Spellings" merely the fact that in many american dictionaries i have seen (though not all) the original spellings are not even mentionned. eg Color = COLOUR, Flavor = FLAVOUR and of course Check = CHEQUE.
Now, beat that for off topic...
Re:Stop identity theft? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know the guys/girls who are doing this and he's a maverick on the security front so I'd trust his servers any day over snail mail.
The other services are bloody handy for travellers too. They can keep scans of your travel documents available should the worst happen. That's gotta be worth the price of admission.
Re:Stop identity theft? (Score:5, Interesting)
Honest
The service sounds great but... (Score:1, Interesting)
explain again why this is a value add?? (Score:1, Interesting)
life = risks. There's no need to let paranoia eat away at your brain cells.
Here's a concept: Read your own dam mail, keep what's important and shred the rest. Gee, that was hard.
New Zealand Post does something similar (Score:2, Interesting)
As a service, New Zealand Post [nzpost.co.nz], the major National Postal service will scan all your mail, collate and archive the Paper and deliver only the electronic version (PDF, TIFF) to you by email or CD every day. They can intercept mail that meets specific criteria (Forms, etc).
Less paper actually makes it to your office
Re:Stop identity theft? (Score:5, Interesting)
My mail is curb delivered, yet I feel more comfortable getting stuff there then I do having this scan deal done. Sure there's a possibility of it getting picked up out of the box, but we usually have someone home and as soon as it gets there, my wife gets it. Never had a problem yet with it getting swiped but the first time I did I can put a mail box in that will let the mail man in and keep everyone else out. They have mailboxes that let the mail man open it once and then when he closes it, it locks. THere are also ways to work with your local post office on securing youe mail. You can have a lock on it if you can manage to set it up with your post master. In any case, I don't feel comfortable letting some mailroom dude scan my mail because he has to open it first. I don't care if the POPE is running the company, I still don't trust it.
As far as scanned travel documents go, I can set that up myself and there are almost always computers near locations you may need these papers.
Re:I use a similar service already (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:E-Bills. . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I use a similar service already (Score:1, Interesting)
I, on the other hand, prefer to avoid the finance charges credit cards put on my purchases, and I find debit cards amazingly insecure. I prefer cash. At least if it's stolen from me, I only lose what I was carrying.
It's also a privacy concern for me. Frankly, I don't want an electronic record of every single place I've been and every single item I ever bought. I'm not a terrorist, I just don't think it's any of your bloody business.
I'm also not sure exactly how a company receiving your mail and scanning it in for you protects against identity theft. Instead of sitting in your mailbox, it's sitting somewhere in a company's offices, where presumably people you don't know have access to it. Plus someone has already opened it to scan it in for you. And it's still going through the mail to get to them, so you need to consider their mail dropoff and mail staff in the mix.
Am I paranoid? Probably. But I'd rather try to secure only my mailbox.
A slight change solves email security issue (Score:4, Interesting)
Instead of emailing the scanned PDF, they should send you notification that a new document is available via email, and make you sign in to their server using https (or maybe require a client-side certificate) to retrieve it. Problem solved.
the military did similar (Score:4, Interesting)
In order to conserve cargo space/weight, England
and the US military used "V-Mail" for letter
communication between soldiers and their families
during World War II.
There was a specified V-Mail form that letters
were to be written on. The form would get copied
onto microfilm, and it was the microfilm that was
sent overseas (not the paper form). When it reached the end point, it
was blown back up into letter form and delivered
to the recipient.
Some info here:
http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibits/2d
http://www.deadmedia.org/notes/49/496.html
Laws, physics, non-pink meat... (Score:1, Interesting)
1) As previously mentioned physical items such as Credit Cards, checks, or medicine. Having them send them to you a month could cause them to be too late (repercussions vary from annoyance to dead).
2) Copyright issues. That magizine you have is protected by law (in most countries) by copyright laws. Does the scanning break the law?
3) Those &#&*@# credit card applications and other junk mail. Like I need another avenue for more spam.
A/C