Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

Going the extra mile

As a control against identity theft, firms operating on-line often send snail mail confirmations to their customers when such things as site passwords, beneficiaries, or customer addresses have been changed. This allows the customer to review such changes and catch any that may have been unauthorized.
I was the recipient of two such pieces of mail today, pertaining to a single financial account.
It seems that a change of address was made!
I do not recall making such a change. I haven’t moved, so why would I?
The great thing about the notices, and the reason for the title of this post, is that the change being reported to me was that my new address is simply my old address in ALL CAPS.
I cannot think of a how a case-insensitive comparison would lead to problems. In fact, the US Postal Service guidelines [link to http://www.usps.com/businessmail101/addressing/deliveryAddress.htm no longer works] for business mail addressing say to use all caps.
So, to the folks who mailed me, thanks for going the extra mile, and on behalf of the USPS, thanks for using the address format they prefer.