Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, step aside. USPS has entered the room. Sort of.  Just when you thought ‘snail mail’ was going down, the U.S. Postal Service has created a new hybrid mail system. Informed Delivery^®  They will take a picture of the outside of each piece of mail that gets delivered to you and send it to you in an email or allow you to view the images online.  At first I had this vision of a postal worker taking a selfie of themselves putting mail into my mailbox.  And that gave me a chuckle.

But this actually makes sense.  Like when using an ATM, I can get an image of the checks I deposit.  Now I can get images of my mail being put into my mailbox.  Not only do you know what got delivered when, but you can know if mail was stolen from your mailbox. (in my case, the box is locked, so that isn’t an issue.)  I can tell you, for all the future-watching I do, I should have seen this coming.  I never would have expected this from the USPS.

This means no more wasted trips to the mailbox.  It’s almost as good as the alerts I get from the library when the book or movie I put on hold is available for pickup. They only take an image of the address side of the letter.  I wonder how this will alter the junk mail industry.

So there you have it.  The latest in hybrid mail systems!  Now if it just had a way to mark that junk mail as spam and have the postal worker remove it from my mailbox before I went to get the mail…

Here is the official announcement from USPS:

My USPS® Free Upgrade Offers Preview of Incoming Mail<!–Notes ACF
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My USPS® Free Upgrade Offers Preview of Incoming Mail We are excited to announce that the My USPS application will soon be upgraded to offer you more benefits and convenience. No action is required from you – you will retain your My USPS benefits, but will also have access to Informed Delivery® notifications, a new, free feature that gives you the ability to see a digital preview of your incoming mail. Informed Delivery allows you to view grayscale images of the exterior, address side of your household’s letter-sized mailpieces* on a computer, tablet, or mobile device. This new feature offers the convenience of seeing what is coming to your mailbox – anytime, anywhere. Now when you log in to your My USPS account, you will be able to track packages and view a preview of your letter-sized mailpieces in one, integrated dashboard. Your dashboard will display mailpiece images for a seven-day period; you can also opt to receive these images via email notification. To learn more about Informed Delivery notifications, please visit the Informed Delivery FAQs. We are proud to offer you more insight into your mail delivery, and thank you for being a valued USPS customer. Sincerely, Your United States Postal Service®