Committing to work with a mail forwarding company can be a big risk to take. You are putting your trust into complete and total strangers, hoping your mail is safe and secure. Checks, IRS statements, family Christmas cards, Grandma’s birthday card with a crisp $20 bill, literally everything will now be going to the hands of someone else! That can be a bit daunting, to say the least. So exactly how secure is mail forwarding? Why do you have to provide so much information just to get your mail? How do you know that your mail is safe and only accessible by you? What measures does the mail forwarding team take to ensure the confidentiality of your personal mail?
First of all, you are provided with a personal mailbox number (pmb) which is yours and yours alone. The mail forwarding company will never disclose this information to anyone without your consent. To obtain a pmb, there are certain documents that are required:
- Two forms of ID for each person on the plan
- A verified credit card
These are ways we ensure “you are who you say you are”. Unfortunately, mail forwarding is an easy way to impersonate someone and start receiving their mail, credit cards and checks. However, it’s not easy to pilfer multiple IDs for the same one person. Though tedious, these are necessary steps to guarantee the safety of our customers.
The only persons who can access your virtual mailbox are you and all those listed on the account. No other customer will be able to see your mail or its contents. Nothing is done without the consent of the customer. Mail isn’t forwarded without a request, nor is it scanned without a request. Mail is neither trashed nor shredded without a request. Your mail will literally sit untouched, in your pmb until a request is made. When requesting a scan of a letter, you will be directly emailed and directed to a pdf of the item once it is scanned. The scan requests automatically get deleted after 120 days – just another safety measure.
Your inbox is itemized by date and each item is tagged with a unique barcode. If any issues arise with any of your mail or packages, you will be able to pinpoint the problem immediately. Security, confidentiality and trust are key factors when choosing the right company to forward your sensitive personal mail. Be sure to peruse the company’s social media outlets to see what other people are saying. Getting the perspective of other individuals like yourself, is always helpful when delving into something new.
How to Find a Secure Mail Forwarding Service You Can Trust
Of course, a big part of protecting your mail and securing your packages and parcels is finding a service you know you can trust. There’s very little worry about the United States Postal Service (USPS) mishandling your mail maliciously. Tampering with the mail is a federal offense (a very serious crime), and people can be criminally charged for even opening up mail that wasn’t addressed to them. Sure, the post office sometimes is delayed or even loses packages or parcels – but they are responsible for moving millions and millions of pieces of mail every day and do a great job at eliminating those issues as much as they can.
When you move to a mail forwarding service, however, those federal protections are not always in place. You’re having a third-party organization handled your mail for you. Part of the agreement with all of these professional companies entails you giving them permission to handle and sometimes even open your mail for you. This is not something that you can leave to people that you are unsure of, services you might not be able to trust, or services that you haven’t fully researched and investigated. You need to know – 100%, beyond a shadow of a doubt – that these companies handling your mail can be trusted with personal, private, and sensitive information.
Below we highlight a couple of things you really need to focus on to make sure that you are only ever working with experts that can be trusted.
Reputation
Right out of the gate, you need to confirm that the mail forwarding service you’re thinking about using has a fantastic reputation in the industry. The internet has made doing this research really easy. A quick Google search of the company you are considering will provide you with a wealth of inside information you may not have had access to otherwise.
But don’t just gloss over these results. No, you’re going to want to dig a little deeper. You’re going to want to dive into customer reviews, testimonials, and case studies you find online. You’re going to want to click a handful of links and read everything about the company that you can find – good, bad, and otherwise. You really have to make sure that you know exactly what kind of operation you are moving forward with.
It’s also not a bad idea to look up mail forwarding services with organizations like the Better Business Bureau, for example. You want to read about complaints that have been made about these companies, how they have remedied these issues, and what their overall standing is in the industry and online in general. Again, an hour or two of research (starting on Google) can point you in the right direction of almost all resources you need to investigate the reputation of these companies. It’s not going to take that long, it’s not going to be that hard, but it is going to give you the confidence to move forward with a company or to ignore it all together. Do your research and due diligence. It’s absolutely critical that you do.
Security Solutions
Secondly, you want to make sure that the mail forwarding service you’re working with has a number of trusted and proven security solutions already in place. We aren’t just talking about your basic “account name and password” details that every single online service includes as standard. We are talking about things like two factor authentication, identity confirmation, password and passcode protection, encryption protocols across the board, and physical security protocols that protect your actual mail, your packages, and were parcels that they handle or forward for you.
A lot of this information is going to come from the reviews in the research that you do, but some answers will only be provided by contacting the company directly. A quick email to customer support will let you know exactly how they protect and preserve your privacy. This is an email you want to send ASAP.
Really dig deep into the security protocols put in place to protect your private information, your privacy, and your identity. A lot of mail forwarding services are able to physically scan not just the outside of your envelopes or boxes but also have permission to scan the contents as well. You have to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this information isn’t going to leak elsewhere, particularly if you need access to sensitive information through your online customer portal right away. It’s impossible to implement too much security with the services. Find one that takes your privacy very seriously – at least as serious as you take your own!
Implement Two Factor Authentication ASAP
We mentioned this moment ago but it is a hugely important piece of the security puzzle. Two factor authentication guarantees that only you have access your account, no matter where you are on the planet. Most mail forwarding services have implemented some sort of two factor authentication into their account services. It’s definitely something you want to turn on and take advantage up as soon as you start up your account. This is just an extra level of security to help you comfortably move forward with a mail scanning and mail forwarding organization. You’ll know exactly when your account is accessed, who is trying to access it, and have tools to shut down unauthorized access very quickly, too.
Smart Security Practices to Keep Your Information and Identity Safe
You also want to make sure that you are using smart security practices to keep your account your information, and your identity safe as well. Again, when you move forward with a third-party mail forwarding organization you’re giving up some of the basic protections you would have had using only the USPS or your mail needs. Choose the right mail forwarding operation, though, and you won’t have to sacrifice security or safety to take advantage of the convenience and benefits those services provide.
Anonymize Your Account as Much as Possible
Straight out of the gate you want to do everything you can to anonymize your account (at least the “front facing account details like your username, for example) as you can. This is a basic security practice that gives you just another layer of protection, one that definitely doesn’t exist if you’re using your name, middle initial, and last name for your account. It may not be the most secure thing world to do, but it is smart, it is strategic, and is something that a lot of mail forwarding service users do when they want to better protect themselves.
Don’t Give Random People Access to Your Mail Forwarding Address
This is a bit of a no-brainer, but you might be surprised at the amount of people that give random access to their mail forwarding account to everyone and anyone. This includes personal assistants, virtual assistants, friends and family members, coworkers, neighbors, or anyone else that doesn’t really need to have access to your mail forwarding details. While your physical address is almost always searchable (as part of public records) you don’t necessarily have to hand out your virtual mail forwarding address to anyone and everyone you come across. Instead, you want to unlink the two as much as possible – keeping the two totally separate, especially online.
This gives you that extra bubble layer of protection and anonymity that you wouldn’t have had if the two were completely linked with one another. All person would have to do is search either your physical address or your mailing address to find the other if they are closely aligned – and that’s a huge security flaw you shouldn’t have to worry about.
Send ALL Mail Through Your Forwarding Service
At the same time, it’s always a good idea to send ALL of your mail – personal, private, business-related, etc. – through your forwarding service when you have found a company you know you can trust. Again, this kind of cleans up the paper trail and keeps your addresses unlinked from one another. When you send your mail through a forwarding service you’re provided with a separate address that has no tangible link to you, your name, or your identity. That’s a huge benefit when it comes to privacy and security.
Take Advantage of the Street Address Provided by These Services
The street address that you are provided by proper mail forwarding services should be taken advantage of as much as you can. Street address provides a bit more credibility, a bit more legitimacy, and even a bit of extra anonymity – particularly when it has no real link to you or your identity the way that these addresses will. You can use the street address for a lot of purposes online as well as off, using it as your mailing address exclusively. You won’t run into the same issues that PO boxes inevitably bring to the table, either. Services and sites that will not accept PO boxes will always accept the street address from your mail forwarding organization.
How US Global Mail Secures Your Mail
US Global Mail is far and away one of the most trusted and reputable organizations in the mail forwarding and mail scanning industry. With a sterling silver reputation, a fantastic customer service department, and glowingly positive reviews all over the internet it’s really hard not to like everything that this organization has to offer. On top of the approach they take to securing and privatizing your information and your identity, they also offer some of the best mail scanning and mail forwarding services money can buy. You’ll have an opportunity to leverage these solutions throughout the United States as well as anywhere overseas – as long as a piece of mail can physically reach you, US Global Mail has you covered!
To learn a little bit more about everything that this organization has to offer, as well as detailed information regarding their pricing structure, the services they provide, and the way that they protect your privacy and anonymity, visit their website at your earliest convenience. Just don’t be surprised if you find yourself blown away by all that US Global Mail has to offer. There’s a reason why so many people have already chosen to create an account with this platform, and why so many people find them to be very best of all the different mail forwarding organizations out there right now. Here is a trusted and very well secured mail forwarding service we recommend!
