Unrelated but speaking of throwaway addresses, it would be cool to be able to create a throwaway postal address (which is then translated by the postal service), so online shops don't get your personal address information.
Yeah exactly, this was one of the usecases I wanted to deal with.
Several brick and mortar retailers here require your address and personal info even when buying and picking up physically at their store and several have had their databases hacked and leaked.
Why do I need to give those when they're not shipping anything to me and I pay in cash?
We have an agency called Maistraatti which is our nation wide registry office which will have all of my postal information, family relations etc.,basicslly anything related to me as part of our society. Why can't I just provide online and physical retailers some ID that the registry can then translate into my actual info when it's actually needed, for example for shipping or if they want to check my credit etc. They could just save that ID for that purchase and temporarily check the necessary info through an API.
Hashed info would be one solution, the retailers would only get the hashes I provide and the registry office could then match those hashes to my info. In essence, I could basically create single use throwaway information for each retailer if I'd wanted to and they would be none the wiser.
That would be a nice service that the postal service could charge for. Virtual po boxes that could be created or re-routed on demand. You would just have a one line address, and when the address is digitized it would be converted to the current address.
PO boxes cost and I still need to provide my name, SSN, email, phone etc even if I'm not ordering online.
If PO boxes were free, it'd solve one part of which I take issue with, but it costs like 4 euros per pickup. If your income is low, the 4 euros on top of the some 20 euros for banking and another 20 for a cellular plan will quickly add up.
So you're thinking like a virtual mailing address as a service. You receive and forward people's mail. Seems interesting. Also kind of high risk for the service provider. People will use something like this to buy guns and drugs and other stuff on the black markets. But I guess they do that anyway. You would have to be prepared to deal with a lot of subpoenas to unmask the real mailing addresses. Could be a useful service though. Be sure to charge a lot for it.
My idea would have to be implemented on a national level. I take issue with the socio-economic injustities in the current identity and personal management solutions as they're not technically accessible nor free while still being simply a must have in order to do anything in Finland.
Isn't this essentially a URL shortener for post? The post operator generates an ID for your address, sender uses it to post stuff, the post office maps it back to the address. One additional challenge I see is that if the fees vary by distance, the sender would still get some sort of an idea as to how far away you are, but that is probably acceptable.
Unrelated but speaking of throwaway addresses, it would be cool to be able to create a throwaway postal address (which is then translated by the postal service), so online shops don't get your personal address information.