Mail processor. I spend $20/month, they receive all of my mail, open it, and digitize it. They discard the junk mail if I want. I never have to visit a mailbox again. I can even register it as my address on my driver's license and for my vehicles.
They have controls as most of these folks have to have (background checks, access controls, physical security, etc [1]). Still better than randos pulling your mail out of the mailbox in front of your residence imho. Its a shim until the last of need for paper mail gets deprecated, as I still need to receive correspondence of importance via snail mail (business filings, IRS, etc).
Some people in my area use these services and I've considered it because mail theft is a big problem in my area. Organized rings doing package theft, identify theft, and all that. So for us at least, it seems significantly safer than having it delivered directly. Personally I just go paperless as much as possible and have the post office hold my mail (another popular response).
If you want a less expensive 'lite' option, you can sign up with the USPS and they will scan your incoming envelopes and email you the images. This at least alerts you when something that should have made it into your mailbox, doesn't.
The problem with PO boxes, besides being in short supply, is all the places that can't accept or ship to PO boxes (DMV, voter registration, private parcel services, insurance companies, ...)
While it cannot be used as an option for "your physical residence.... in legal documents" -- voter registration or the DMV -- the USPS does offer "Street Addressing Service." It provides a street address you can use with UPS, FedEx, and others. P.O. Box 59 would be 500 Main Street #59 (for a Post Office located at 500 Main Street). The service is free. (I just filled out the form two days ago.)
Yeah, I use the same. Super convenient for when I work on the road, never have to worry about not getting my mail. For those who are asking I use TravelingMailbox.com, it was recommended by people when I moved onto my boat years ago and even now that I'm back on land I still keep it up.
With any mail processor, you're sort of married to them once you start giving out the address. I spent months agonizing over who I was going to tie myself to (and did quite a bit of research from HN folks [1] [2] providing their recommendations). In the end, I picked the vendor I did because I only get a few pieces of mail a month, they're responsive, and I can use them for residency purposes [3] (as my long term plan is to bounce from the US and be an expat). And unlike a startup, they have some longevity track record and are likely to continue to exist into the future, which is important when everyone is going to have them as your mailing address.
I had such a service for a while. The only two issues I ran into was:
- Getting the physical mail out of them was hard. In theory they kept main for some number of days if I needed it physical for some random reason, but the two times I needed to have them forward me some important document, it had already been shredded. All in all, this was a minor edge case really.
- One company, All State, could not for the life of them realize that I did not live in some PO Box in a different state. They kept changing my rates to the state of the service, and I had a confusing call with a CSR each time where I tried to explain my mailing address and my residential addresses were unrelated. All State was the only company I ever encountered with this issue, everyone else that needed my home address had no trouble with this concept. I solved this by ditching All State.
I only stopped using them because they got bought out and only kept business accounts. I should look for a replacement company, it was very useful.
From what I’ve heard the addresses for these services are being tagged as “not a residence” in some database. Then some services aren’t accepting them as a valid address.
Similar to how phone numbers can be tagged VoIP and won’t be accepted for 2-factor authentication.
I tried to priority mail the keys to a mailbox slot back to someone last year so it would go to their doorstep and not the mailbox slot. Post office put it in the slot anyway ostensibly due to covid. Had to get new keys made. I should have pushed for a refund.
I use VirtualPostMail and like them for a couple of reasons:
- Easy to set up autoscanning so I just get PDFs with all incoming email.
- Easy to get things mailed to me.
- Can be a registered agent for my business (at least in CA).
- Can handle check deposits for me.
EDIT: The service I use is https://www.sbimailservice.com/.