With more than 46 million people changing their mailing addresses annually, preventing identity fraud and protecting the mail and customer privacy is a huge task. The U.S. Postal Service made some changes early this month that it believes will help.
“Recently, the Postal Service decided to enhance our security protocols surrounding its change of address,” said USPS spokesperson James Boxrud.
Now a change of address involves verifying identity. Boxrud said that this is designed to combat identity theft. Before this change, if you were moving you would have to pick up a card at the post office, fill it out, toss it in the mail, and the Post Office would process that for you.
“Now it's changed. If you don't do it online, you can do it at a at a post office and you actually have to bring it in with a copy of your driver's license, state issued ID, something along those lines, for us to do personal, identifiable identification before we go ahead and process it,” Boxrud said.
It can take seven to 10 days for all the mail to get caught up with a new address. Boxrud recommends filling out the form early on in the moving process.
“You can backdate it and say, you know, say 'hey, I'm moving on Aug. 1,' so you, you would date your change of address card to start forwarding mail on Aug. 1. So that way, all the way through July 31, you'd be getting mail at your house in Bethel. And then it would go ahead and start the forwarding process. And then you get down to your other locations and you should be good,” Boxrud said.
If the change of address is happening after someone moves, Boxrud said that there are a few ways to get it done.
“Go to usps.com. Go to quick tools, change my address, and you can do it online. Again, if the, for whatever reason, the online verification doesn't go through, then, you know, you're directed to go to a post office, you go into your new local post office, say, ‘hey, this is me. Here's my identification. I'm moving from this address in Bethel to Boulder, Colorado, and I need to get my mail’ and then they'll be able to help you there at the counter,” Boxrud said.
Boxrud said that the new verification process started in July.
