Re: Mailboxes and Pseudonyms

[Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>]

At 11:56 AM 9/17/98 -0700, Matthew James Gering wrote:
> BTW, why are most businesses so hostile to pseudonyms? 
> I go to rent a mailbox, paid 1 yr. in advance with cash, 
> and they still want two pieces of photo ID to copy.

Where do you live?  In the US, the Post Office has rules against
anybody running mailbox services without making sure that the
customers sign some forms - you not only have to acknowledge that
the Post Office doesn't forward first class mail addressed to
mailbox companies (semi-reasonable), but also (unreasonably)
demonstrate to the Post Office's satisfaction that you
really are the you living at some other location and you don't
mind having mail addressed to you sent to this mailbox.
Exactly what that means is up to the local Postmaster;
one town where I've rented a mailbox really doesn't care,
and another had a control freak Postmistress.

But if you live in California, it's worse.  There was a law passed
in about 1994 (AB185 or AB187?) that asserted that 
1) Many businesses in California are run from mailboxes
2) Many businesses in California have committed fraud
3) Therefore, we'll force anybody who rents a mailbox,
	business or not, to identify their True Name and True Address
	and appoint the mailbox service as an agent for service of process
	so we can bust them in case they use the mailbox for fraud.
The wording of the law was actually more blatantly annoying than that.
The exact amount of ID you have to produce is tied to the local
Post Office regulations, but also requires a picture ID.
The PO will accept major credit cards and SSN cards as ID,
and my mailbox vendor didn't really want either of those,
because she didn't want the liability of having private financial data
around in a file she has to keep readily accessible for inspection.

A year or two ago, California was also having problems with
women who were battered or otherwise trying to avoid violent
ex-husbands and ex-boyfriends being tracked to where they lived
through their mailbox addresses, and some legislator was pushing
a program that would get Certified Endangered Women a mailbox
using some kind of cutout program that would give them some privacy.
Would have made much more sense just to dump the recent law,
so everybody could have some privacy.
				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
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