4 ms·

I definitely agree in principle. But - without doxxing myself - I input my zip and the city is not correct. It’s a very close neighboring suburb (where the boun

by mttjj 7mo ago

I definitely agree in principle. But - without doxxing myself - I input my zip and the city is not correct. It’s a very close neighboring suburb (where the boundaries are definitely blurry) but it’s not the city on all the legal documents for my current house.

aewens 7mo ago
My brother’s house is in the same boat. Unfortunately, not all ZIP codes exclusively belong to one city.
- cozzyd 7mo ago
  And boats can move from city to city!
  - Maxious 7mo ago
    Boats can have zip codes too. Well one boat. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/on-the-water-with-americas-only-floating-post-office https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/on-the-water-with-amer...
matthewbauer 7mo ago
Yeah city is not fully a function of zip. ~I think state is though.~* I believe when multiple cities share a zip code USPS uses the larger one. Usually the wrong city will get delivered though, probably not guaranteed. * correcting myself, some zip codes do cross state lines
- krater23 7mo ago
  Can't say anything about the US, but in Germany when more than one cities have the same zip code it's just not important because there is only one sorting center for all cities with the same zip and they just sort per street address.
bob1029 7mo ago
Zip code is a very powerful factor from a PII perspective. https://dataprivacylab.org/projects/identifiability/index.html https://dataprivacylab.org/projects/identifiability/index.ht...
ezfe 7mo ago
Legal address doesn't matter for mail, and all of this stuff is about mail/shipping. This includes billing addresses. I would have assumed that you knew that. I know people whose ZIP code belongs to a neighboring town (because mail works that way) and it basically becomes their de-facto address.
- petee 7mo ago
  Some areas have duplicate, or very similar street names (ie, 'ave' vs. 'street') I don't think its that much of an ask that a website lets you enter your address correctly
  - esrauch 7mo ago
    Yeah it should auto fill but not stop you from changing it, best experience 98% of the time. I just looked it up and apparently there's some cases of zip codes that do go across state lines too, but it's rare.
    - ezfe 7mo ago
      There is a canonical full address for every mailbox in the US. Would be curious to see what these houses show. My experience living in towns that received mail from other towns is your canonical address IS the other town.
      - esrauch 7mo ago
        FWIW I have received mail from the USPS in places that had no canonical full address as well. It's not the case in reality that the USPS only delivers mail to mailboxes that have an associated entry in their canonical database here in "messy" reality.
  - ezfe 7mo ago
    Street name isn’t auto completed here…
- mttjj 7mo ago

by mttjj 7mo ago

aewens 7mo ago

My brother’s house is in the same boat. Unfortunately, not all ZIP codes exclusively belong to one city.

cozzyd 7mo ago
And boats can move from city to city!
- Maxious 7mo ago
  Boats can have zip codes too. Well one boat. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/on-the-water-with-americas-only-floating-post-office https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/on-the-water-with-amer...

matthewbauer 7mo ago

Yeah city is not fully a function of zip. ~I think state is though.~* I believe when multiple cities share a zip code USPS uses the larger one. Usually the wrong city will get delivered though, probably not guaranteed. * correcting myself, some zip codes do cross state lines

krater23 7mo ago
Can't say anything about the US, but in Germany when more than one cities have the same zip code it's just not important because there is only one sorting center for all cities with the same zip and they just sort per street address.

bob1029 7mo ago

Zip code is a very powerful factor from a PII perspective. https://dataprivacylab.org/projects/identifiability/index.html https://dataprivacylab.org/projects/identifiability/index.ht...

ezfe 7mo ago

Legal address doesn't matter for mail, and all of this stuff is about mail/shipping. This includes billing addresses. I would have assumed that you knew that. I know people whose ZIP code belongs to a neighboring town (because mail works that way) and it basically becomes their de-facto address.

petee 7mo ago
Some areas have duplicate, or very similar street names (ie, 'ave' vs. 'street') I don't think its that much of an ask that a website lets you enter your address correctly
- esrauch 7mo ago
  Yeah it should auto fill but not stop you from changing it, best experience 98% of the time. I just looked it up and apparently there's some cases of zip codes that do go across state lines too, but it's rare.
  - ezfe 7mo ago
    There is a canonical full address for every mailbox in the US. Would be curious to see what these houses show. My experience living in towns that received mail from other towns is your canonical address IS the other town.
    - esrauch 7mo ago
      FWIW I have received mail from the USPS in places that had no canonical full address as well. It's not the case in reality that the USPS only delivers mail to mailboxes that have an associated entry in their canonical database here in "messy" reality.
- ezfe 7mo ago
  Street name isn’t auto completed here…
mttjj 7mo ago