Comment Re:People concentration and location really to bla (Score 1) 235
I live in an urban area, and although we have mail slots (five feet from the street, no great trouble for the mail carriers), we have to use the blue boxes on the streetcorners for outgoing mail. The reason is straightforward -- outgoing mail gets stolen. A lot of outgoing mail is used to pay bills, and so may contain money or identifying information useful for identity/credit theft. Small-scale identity theft and meth use are trending together (it requires time and concentration, which I gather methamphetamines provide), and stealing mail is one way to go about it.
The blue boxes probably aren't hugely secure since they depend on a lock with likely little diversity in the keys, but that aspect aside they're big sturdy steel things bolted to the ground, placed in visible and generally well-lit locations. Without them, folks living in this area would have go go to an actual post office, mail things at work, or perhaps retail stores would step in to fill the gap.
The blue boxes probably aren't hugely secure since they depend on a lock with likely little diversity in the keys, but that aspect aside they're big sturdy steel things bolted to the ground, placed in visible and generally well-lit locations. Without them, folks living in this area would have go go to an actual post office, mail things at work, or perhaps retail stores would step in to fill the gap.
