Slashdot Mirror
Snail Mail As E-Mail
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."
How would this stop identity theft. Unless you use TLS/SSL email is less secure than snail mail -- its not traveling across bare network wires.
When a new bill arrives, I get an email and I can view the scan of the bill online through the paytrust website. I can pay the bill automatically, if I choose, by establishing per-payee rules (always pay bill [foo] as long as it is under [y] dollars) and that sort of thing.
At the end of the year they send me a CD-ROM that contains all that year's bills and payments for my archives, allowing me to store everything in a much more space efficient way than I'd have with paper files.
It's a great service, although I don't know that I would find much benefit if they started handling all my mail and not just my bills. Mail I get is either bills, junk, or physical things which I wouldn't want in scanned form.
I don't now about you, but my version of Adobe Acrobat Reader has this newfangled "print" feature.
The unofficial
I don't like the idea of someone reading my personal snail mail. I'm sure they get a laugh out of finding out "Mr Jones" subscribes to Busty Babes monthly etc.
My other sig is crap too
Don't most services that require bills offer some type of electronic payments? Wouldn't scanning your bills just be more work than going to their website and paying it that way?
I am over here... now I am back over here!
Doesn't sound so great to me. A lot of things that come in the mail are sent that way *because* they have to reach you physically - a new credit card, etc.
The Belgian Official Mail services were planning to do the opposite. Printing emails and delivering it to for ex. elderly people. That way evrybody has email, even if you do not have internet available.
-> More Tolerance Is Less Extremism <-
Interesting concept, but even discounting the obvious security and privacy concerns, what types of correspondance would this be useful for?
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?
UK Royal Mail has offered this as a service for some years now.
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.
I have a nice simple Q for ya,
Think of all the spam you get...
and picture getting that in your REAL mailbox...
and sorting through that for your bills and such...
**shudder**
This service lets you send an email, and have it converted to a snail mail letter and sent to someone. So if you combined the two services, you could send an email which would be converted to snail mail, then the recipient could convert the snail mail to an email that they could read from any computer in the world.
Oh wait...
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
Oh yeah, cant wait to get my tax return check in PDF. Try explaining that one to the bank teller
...Honest!
Or better yet how about my ATM/Credit card?
Do you take plastic?
VISA, MasterCard, Discover and Amex
Great -- Hands over printed card
Awkward Pause (tm)
Yeah, I had to print it since it came in my email...
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Targeted at the worldwide traveler, it also looks like a good way to help prevent identity theft
Are you mad? You mean having someone else read your mail and then send it in a searchable format over the Internet is a good way to prevent identity theft? Is today opposite day?
I don't want them forwarding me a scan of my monthly Playboy. Hmm on second thoughts :)
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
what i really need is the other way around. I send them the email, they print it out and snail mail it for me
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.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Hrm, it seems to me that such a system would only work for 'normal/average' snail mails. Letters, etc. I wouldn't want stuff like bank PIN codes, important work information, etc going there. Or mails where they actually provide you with something physically useful in the letter, such as a return envelope.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
There's just a little something that you get from actual mail, especially hand-written mail. True, it's terribly archaic, but when you're far, far away, a letter is one of the nicest things to receive someone willing to spend a buck and some time. Maybe it's just the amount of time invested in handwriting, or the lack thereof when typing an email, but the physical presence of personal mail is something people should not, in my opinion, be so eager to discard.
That being said, business mail, provided it is sent via secure trasnmissions, seems perfectly suited for movement towards digitalization. The businesses themselves, though, should take more initiative to move themselves away from the massive and expensive paper usages and try billing electronically. I can only imagine the vast amounts of paper used by banks every month for high-speed printed glossy credit card applications.
Losers choose to abuse the use of "loose".
-
It's worth noting, perhaps, that in the early days of the Internet, it was proposed that the U. S. Post Office manage e-mail. Electronic messages would come to your local post office and then be delivered to you along with the regular mail. The proposal was not considered for very long.
No, not only was it considered, it was actually implemented and deployed. It was called E-COM, and it operated from 1982 to 1985.And it was really dumb.
The USPS put in a system with a mainframe computer and "high-speed" printers in major regional post offices. Mailers could submit mail jobs as IBM remote job entry jobs over dedicated SNA links. The interface was so one-way that error messages came back as paper mail a day or two later.
E-COM was for first class mail, sent in bulk. You had to send at least 200 letters to a single regional post office in a day, so it was useless for general business mail. It cost as much as first class mail, so it was useless for advertising. Mailers couldn't have a return envelope included, so it was useless for bills. Western Union did establish an extra-cost consolidation and routing service, so you sent your mail to them and they routed the messages and batched up jobs for the USPS. But few people signed up.
an AOL disk looks like.
KFG
it also looks like a good way to help prevent identity theft and getting nasty white powder in the mail.
Some people I know would be more than happy receiving white powder in the mail.
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
Wow. In the United States there are federal laws protecting both the content and *addresses* for all mail sent through the US Postal Service. If Big Brother wants to watch you there are oversight requirements (ie. the watcher must be watched) for the simple act of scanning the addresses on an envleope. The requirements are more stringent if BB wants to actually open your letter and read its contents. I don't remember off hand at what point it takes a Judge to sign off on it, I'd have to look it up.
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. =[
Travel the Galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms...
In 1996 when I had to travel in order to take Oracle7 classes, my company's owner would send me packing in my own car with gas and food money only. When I would arrive at the hotel (having driven from Louisville KY to say, *Framingham MA* (a hellacious drive of 20 hours) I would call him at the office (often late at night) and he would fax an image of his credit card straight to the hotel desk: blown up to 8.5"x11" size. They always accepted it.
Yea, like this is really going to work. And how much is it going to cost me to have them forward each rebate check I get, not to mention what it cost for them to scan it in the first place? Think spam was expensive before? Wait until you pay for scanning all the junk mail that you get in snail mail, or all the crap packed in with your bills. Say goodbye to ever getting a magazine subscription. No free samples in the mail any more, and no cookies from Mom at Christmas time. And I'm paying for this why? Because I fear identity theft? So that then they can e-mail my private mail to me as clear text? So that an unknown number of people at that company I know nothing about all see all of my mail?
Face it, the always-on-the-go world traveler who just might (but I think it unlikely) get anything out of this has other means to deal with it: a personal assistant, express shipments that can catch up to the next hotel he will be at, faxes for some documents, he doesn't need an outside company poking through his business. The average smuck (like most of us) wants that mail, and knows that some of it needs to be dealt with on a timely basis (If someone sends me tickets, for example, I want them before the event, not a week after), and that some of it will get "lost" if an outside company is opening it and going through it.
Bad idea. Oh, also, the company will be out of business in six months.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
My mom could finally send me a completely fat-free chocolate bunny for Easter! ;)
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
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.
"This is why men never share their feelings; because women always remember." -Just Shoot Me.
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.
Go permanent? In your dreams and my worst nightmares.
5) Columbia House CD of the Month Club selection
4) Beer of the Month Club selection
3) Oh...look - shiny!
2) Cookies? What cookies?
1) Congratulations! You're the Publisher's Clearinghouse winner!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
What security? If they scan my mail, they have to open it. If they open it, they can read it. Why should I trust these folks?
And what about all those times when the recipient really needs hardcopy, not email.
Besides, if I'm in, say, the UK, how long is it going to take for my mail to get to Australia?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
is newspeak.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
As a service, New Zealand Post, 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
The weathers here - Wish you were beautiful
Could this be a way for europeans to get US credit cards (if a service was used in the US like this Australian one)? I know a lot of mac users wish they had a US Credit card to use iTunes, among other things. Also, the USPS seems to be hurting due to electronic mail. What if they offered a service like this for a premium. They surely would have some takers. And they would just need to buy some big automated scanners and a bit of online infrastructure. Sounds like they would be the best candidates for the job seeming they are the hub. Reduce ID theft en route that way.
You miss the main purpose: If I'm out travelling a lot it would be a hassle to make arrangements to make sure I receive any important mail. I might not stay long enough in one place to be able to rely on normal mail forwarding. Or I might simply want to be able to check my snail mail from whenever I happen to be, instead of waiting for a pile of paper when I get home.
Presumably a company making a living of this will be careful about who they hire. So the reduction in risk of identity theft would be from having a small set of strangers who rely on their customers trust to make money open your mail instead of some strangers who happen to be a criminal intent on stealing everything you've got going on a rampage through your mailbox every now and again.
I have been receiving bills like this for around 3 years. Every bill I receive is scanned and I can view them online. It has been a great boon as a consultant as I don't have a pile of [overdue] bills waiting for me when I get home. Plus I can run reports and see exactly when something was paid and how much was spent.
Since it scans the entire bill I am able to view detailed information. Such as, I can view natural gas and electric usuage and see if that new furnace and air conditioning unit are actually paying off one year later (something I did about a month ago.) Sure you can keeps years of paperwork in a box, but that's not searchable.
I receive 100% of my bills in this manner. I will never go back!
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Lois, this isn't my Batman glass. - Peter
No, of course not. It sneaks up on you while you're asleep, looking for warm blood... That sounds like a Stephen King plot. The shredder is loose. Is it in the closet? Is it in the bathroom? Oh no! RUN! RUN!
Title: Shredder Moon
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Actually, Citibank has (had?) a system for storing all of your various logins and viewing all of your accounts on one page. The URL is myciti.com
They could pack hundreds of times more V-mail in a container than standard post. When just about every ship crossing the sea was needed for the war effort, this was a Good Thing.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
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.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I've been looking for a way to outsource my anthrax problem. Now I've found it!
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
"it also looks like a good way to help prevent identity theft and getting nasty white powder in the mail."
Are we really so blinded by fear in this country that Joe American is afraid he'll be targeted with an envelope of anthrax? Jeez!
Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology; Ain't got time to make no apology
V-Mail
2 a_vmail .html
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
-mrv