Protip: Only do the temporary change. It still lasts like 6 months so it would cover practically everything. You could potentially miss something later but for me it’s a solid trade.

For the most part I figure if something is really important enough people will figure out a way to reach me. My e-mail address is pretty easy to find and any business I have subscribed to services from has that. I consider it the official way to contact me. I already deprecated snail mail and phone as official ways to reach me.

Yeah, I hate those assholes for that, that's why I don't tell the USPS anymore when I move.

Whenever I give my address to a business for shipping, DMV, voter registration, etc. I also tack on a code to my address so that if they leak it as-is, they'll have blood on their hands, and I can publicly shame them for it. But that hasn't yet seemed to successfully track down the source.

> Whenever I give my address to a business for shipping, DMV, voter registration, etc. I also tack on a code to my address

Could you elaborate on that?

Let's say your address was

256 Main St. Apt 10, Some City, CA, USA

I usually provide my address as

256 Main St. Unit 10-BCRK, Some City, CA, USA

I generate a unique code for each entity that I am required to provide my address to.

I usually change "Apt" to "Unit" to stump the automatic address-correcting APIs that will convert "Apt 10-BCRK" to "Apt 10". I found that changing "Apt" to "Unit" usually stumps them.

The idea is that if I see another business use "BCRK" to send me junk mail, or list my address on those idiot people search sites, I will write a blog and publicly shame the first business for giving it out.

Package delivery drivers happily ignore the "BCRK" part and my packages still arrive as usual.

When giving out billing address for credit card authorization, I find usually I can skip the apartment number field and the card still authorizes just fine, so I also don't need to tell online retailers the same 4-letter code that my bank has listed for my address.

This is a great idea and I would like to use it. However, I have only the house number and street address. What can I do in that case?

PS: I generate separate emails already. Example: somebusiness@mydomain.com However, I have not found a single case where they leaked my email address, so I am not sure if it helps for spam and privacy.

I separate emails, a different address for each company/organisation I deal with. Since I started in 2002, I have found multiple instances of leaked or sold email addresses. My Dropbox one was leaked for sure, as that was quite public, and some of the others seem sold, as the companies seem a bit fly-by-night (of course that may also mean they're clueless about security). One reputable-seeming one I contacted about it claimed they hadn't had a data breach, which I think probably just means they weren't aware of it. I've also had an address scraped and then copied manually from a classified ad - they left out the first letter when they copied and pasted, but I still get it since I have a catch-all!

I do the separate-email thing too and my spambox is chock full of emails to leaked addresses. The leaks seem mostly from large, upstanding companies that have had data breaches (Adobe, Myspace, ...), rather than from deliberate email address sales. It's still very handy to be able to just disable an email address... can't do that if you've used the same registration email on 1000 sites.

I imagine you could just still just use "Unit XYZ" or whatever.

If it confuses your delivery folks and it's the same people every day, just explain it to them to ignore that, but most likely they'll just ignore the Unit stuff and leave the package at your door as usual.

I found this out when I moved recently and I find it incredibly stupid. I'm now simultaneously annoyed that my new address seems to still receive mail for the last 3 tenants, but I also didn't do a change of address so whoever ends up renting my old apartment is going to be annoyed with me.

The last house I lived in was torn down and rebuilt. The address changed from 311 to 313 in the process. I've always wondered if it was because they were tired of receiving my junkmail.

Last time I moved I gave USPS a change of address to a PO Box. Then, after updating all the important ones I forgot, I let it expire six months later. I'm still getting junk mail at my new address, but some of the more annoying ones have lost track of me.