Mailing address aliasing as a method to protect consumer privacy

TL;DR

Mailing address aliasing offers a potentially cost-effective way to enhance consumer privacy during online commerce by creating private alias addresses that reduce unsolicited mail, though it faces compatibility challenges with some merchant systems.

Contribution

The paper introduces mailing address aliasing as a novel privacy-preserving method, analyzing its advantages, disadvantages, and potential impact compared to traditional PO box solutions.

Findings

Reduces unsolicited mail more effectively than PO boxes

Lower cost and greater control for consumers

May face compatibility issues with some merchant systems

Abstract

During online commerce, a customer will typically share his or her mailing address with a merchant to allow product delivery. This creates privacy risks for the customer, where the information may be misused, sold, or leaked by multiple merchants. While physical and virtual PO boxes can reduce the privacy risk, these solutions have associated costs that prevent greater adoption. Here, we introduce the concept of mailing address aliasing, which may offer lower cost and greater control in some cases. With this approach, an alias address is created that maps to the customer's true address. The mapping is kept private from the merchant but shared with the carrier. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this approach compared with traditional methods for mailing address privacy. We find that mailing address aliasing is likely to reduce unsolicited mail to a greater extent than physical or virtual PO boxes. However, mailing address aliasing may not be compatible with all merchants' ordering systems.