An interesting topic was posted over at the domain tools blog about how the post office could route mail based on a domain name. Right now if you were to send a letter addressed to the Prime Minister (without an address) then it would make it to our Prime Minister. If that is possible then one would think it would be possible to route mail if you were to put a domain as the address. It’s not possible today but with some technology it could work.
Imagine if you were to be given a first.lastname.mail domain and then anyone who wanted to send you a snail mail letter could address your mail with just your domain and it was delivered to you based on your whois.
If you moved it would not matter because you would only need to update your whois and the mail would then begin to route to your new location.
I can see something like this working. What do you think?
Matt
July 26, 2007 3:04 pm
As I commented on the DomainTools post, this is a huge invite to SPAM in your physical mailbox.
Plus, this wouldn’t work so well, since there’s tons of people with the same names. Maybe if we add the first initial of the middle name, but it’s still possible for duplicates.
Besides, with a Government run Postal Service, this would take years to implement. It’d be easier for UPS, FedEx and the like to implement this. Using an actual domain would be better though. If we flood the postal service with mail addressed to domains and a domain as a return address, I wonder what would happen to all that mail…
christian
July 30, 2007 8:34 am
Matt some one replied to you.
“to counter speedboxer: physical spam would increase, but not drastically. you wouldn’t get hundreds of them every day, as spammers would have to pay per spam. they’d think twice. which means no stock quotes, lottery prizes or enlargements. and definitely no widows of deposed rulers. that lot would still stick to the internets.”
I agree, spammers want to make money not use money.
“I wonder what would happen to all that mail…”
Two things could happen.
One, all that mail could go to the holding room, they will go thru the mail to find out more info on who to send it to.
Second, they might see this has a new way to bring the postal service to the new age of internet. and they might implement it.
Either way…
Im going to try to send one to bluefur.ca/com, ill repost in here when i do.
a
August 2, 2007 2:32 pm
In snail mail, spammes pay to deliver. Trouble with spam on the internet, is spammers are using stolen resources.
Domains are unique.