Mailbag: Updating your details when changing addresses

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Last week's look at Roger Sullivan's plea for an easy and efficient way to change the identity information held by multiple contacts (in his case it was a move to a new address that caused the "pain point") brought some interesting responses.

Sullivan, himself, mentioned one, Thinsia's Heartbeat-ID. As Sullivan quickly points out, though: "The issue remains that these technologies need to be deployed by reputable companies that I trust and that trust me - or the digital source of 'me.' This requires trust relationships between me, the Identity Provider(s) and the Service Provider(s)." Other comments I received alluded to that problem while talking specifically about the change of address issue.

Reader Al Maurer pointed out: "I just moved. You don't have to do this yourself. It's called the United States Postal Service, and it's free. You give them your new address and they forward you your mail, less the junk mail - and that's really important. Then you can go to the [USPS] Web site and change your address for the bank, etc., if you really want to continue to get mail from these sources."

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Last week's look at Roger Sullivan's plea for an easy and efficient way to change the identity information held by multiple contacts (in his case it was a move to a new address that caused the "pain point") brought some interesting responses.

Sullivan, himself, mentioned one, Thinsia's Heartbeat-ID. As Sullivan quickly points out, though: "The issue remains that these technologies need to be deployed by reputable companies that I trust and that trust me - or the digital source of 'me.' This requires trust relationships between me, the Identity Provider(s) and the Service Provider(s)." Other comments I received alluded to that problem while talking specifically about the change of address issue.

Reader Al Maurer pointed out: "I just moved. You don't have to do this yourself. It's called the United States Postal Service, and it's free. You give them your new address and they forward you your mail, less the junk mail - and that's really important. Then you can go to the [USPS] Web site and change your address for the bank, etc., if you really want to continue to get mail from these sources."

That, presumably, solves the trust problem, but it does mean that, every time your address changes, you have to remember everyone who has your old address, find their Web site and enter your new data in the form that the vendor provides? That's not particularly efficient. And, considering the amount of mail that's "misplaced" when I move, it's not very reliable either.

Another reader, Daniel Halber, wrote to say: "I moved two weeks ago and I can tell that, in France, the government provides part of this service for free, and (at least) a company provides another part of this service for a fee. There are still some non-automated change-of-address notifications that you end up doing manually..."

He provided these Web sites: Changement d'Adresse en ligne; Novadress. The first is a way to send your new address information to various government departments (the tax people, social services, national health insurance, pensions, etc.). It does require that you fill out forms with the specific information each department needs. It's not so much an automated change of address as a way of consolidating the individual change forms from each government organization.

Novaddress is almost a commercial version of the government site. That is, you can fill out a form, check off some boxes, and major organizations that you might deal with (utility companies, banks, newspapers, local government offices, etc.) will be notified of your change of address. And it's free, as far as I can tell. The companies benefiting from getting your correct address pay a fee that supports the service. That does mean that not every possible correspondent is represented or will be notified - only the listed organizations get your change of address. But there is a way to recommend new correspondents (which, presumably, Novaddress will follow up on with a pitch to join in).

There's still that issue of trust, though. How much of your personal data are you willing to risk in either a government depository (USPS, the French government public service administration) or a fairly new start-up (Thinsia, Novaddress)? We'll come back to this discussion from time to time.

Dave Kearns is a consultant and editor of IdM, the Journal of Identity Management.