I've been using PMBs for about 20 years. If you don't own real estate it can definitely help anonymize your location, even to the government. You rent one home, get a PMB using that location as your home, then move. Use the PMB for everything and never give out your new home address.

If you own real estate it's much harder, especially now that companies have to report their owners and directors.

At the very least PMBs help protect your home address from companies and the public.

It just adds an extra step that keeps the general public away from your PII. The post office knows who owns that PO box and where that person actually lives. A simple subpoena makes that information available to whatever arm of enforcement needs it.

Every info aggregator (including ones that post crap online) already has both bits of info and associates them.

Go ahead, do some searches on yourself - I had accurate addresses and poboxes I’d long since forgotten about.

Yeah, I know. It's disturbing to say the least. The thinking with PO Boxes is just left over from a time when it was possible to use them as an extra layer of protection. It's barely an inconvenience to anyone who wants to get your address, anymore.

A simple what? "subpoena"? Is that like a new term for a bulk database retrieval?

PO boxes have stricter address information requirements but there are other services that are more lax and can pass with a utility bill from a previous rental address. Thus, obfuscating the real address.

A lot of rich and famous do this, keeps the “riffraff” off their ass. Not meant to be bulletproof but can be useful.

Some rich folks trying to avoid random googlers isn't quite the same as trying to avoid ICE's ire.

Many famous people have stalkers. And not the point of this subthread.