That's still not name indirection, this is more like a 302, because your physical mail goes first to the company and then gets moved around.

But the person who sent the mail doesn't know where it ends up. These services are exactly like what the parent was talking about -- someone sends a letter to a virtual address at the mail aggregator service, and the service then sends the letter on to your physical address.

A 302 is like a letter that's been marked return to sender with a forwarding address. The original sender would then know the actual physical address.

True, 302 was the wrong analogy. But the good point here is that there are three kinds of indirection, not two.

The problem with forwarding is that the mail has to make two physical hops so it takes twice as long and requires twice the resources. This gets particularly annoying if I set the service up in, say, California and then move to New York.

Ideally the US Postal Service could offer a service like this, then it wouldn't require any extra steps.

Yes. Exactly. Except that I would want a private entity to manage the database in the same way that name servers are done now because I want the private carriers to be able to access that info. And I would like the protocol to be open so that I could manage my own entry(s) if I chose to.

Are you sure it works this way? This seems like a very solvable problem.

Over the holidays I researched all major providers of virtual addresses and can confirm that this is how it works.

First your mail is routed to the provider’s local address or central warehouse, then they manually forward it to you. Some providers (incl the popular Earth Class Mail) operate as a hub-and-spoke network: all mail goes to their centralised distribution center, they process it and send it to you. This means if I buy something from a few blocks away, it will first have to Midwest then back to me.

Would you be willing to share your research? It just so happens I’m looking for such a service currently. Email in profile.

How else could it possibly work given current constraints?

> Over the holidays I researched all major providers of virtual addresses

I’m okay with latency and eventual consistency. I just need an analog->digital funnel for paper mail when I’m thousands of miles from home.

This is also my use-case: I'm often away, but cannot miss snail-mail from gov/lawyers/clients. I'm based in NYC and was evaluating this market.

The main discovery was how much of the "virtual address" industry is a nice wrapper around two independent service providers I call "processors" and "sellers".

"Processors" are the people who actually handle your mail. Often they are existing businesses like serviced offices, co-working places, pack&ship outlets etc. These small businesses have a fixed address and personnel, so their marginal cost of handling envelopes is much lower than having to sustain an office dedicated to processing mail. These processors are combined into a whitelisted network and this is how you get many addresses everywhere.

"Sellers" are the endless firms that sell access to networks of processors at arbitrary prices. There are exceptions (e.g. EarthClassMail) who manage their own processing, but most companies I found on the internet are just billing fronts with an app. I found this out because I kept seeing the same "virtual addresses" all the time, so I inspected those buildings on Google Maps or in person.

My selection criteria had three parts: 1. Deliverability (can I send both letters and packages, and will they arrive?) 2. Longevity (will this address exist tomorrow?) and 3. Security (who might be looking through my documents?). Based on this criteria, I have almost no regard for who the "seller" is, and it's all entirely about the "processor". By reviewing addresses given, I found out that sometimes the "virtual address" belongs to a shipping/mailing outlet. These people are dedicated to mail, and tend to be very stable - I prefer them over services offices/co-working places that have other priorities. I also found some mailing stores that were actually UPS stores, and I see this as reducing the risk further.

So for ~$30/mo, all my snail mail goes to a UPS store (managed by the seller service at https://www.anytimemailbox.com). When new item arrives, UPS people send a photo of the outside and I decide whether to trash or forward the item (or pick it up myself). This address looks like a regular apartment number (e.g. "123 Main St #45") and I can use it everywhere (unlike a PO box). In fact, it is listed as my primary address with the phone company, the bank, state driving license, insurance company, government records, and all business registrations. I try to be paperless, but now I am free to travel or move as much as I want knowing I'll never miss anything important from the old school of correspondence.

Thank you so much for sharing your research.

That's like those MITM corporate proxies.

Yuck.