This is the letter I sent to President Trump in 2017 regarding Mass Address. Here are a few things you should know before reading this letter. 1. The Equifax Data Breach announcement came less than 2 weeks before I sent this. 2. I wasn’t certified in Cyber Security. 3. I did not realize I would have to redesign the whole platform because of Equifax.
September 20th, 2017
President Donald Trump
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Trump,
My name is Edward W. Hood and I am the founder and CEO of Mass Address, INC. I am also a proud member of the Florida Air National Guard. The purpose of this letter is to bring awareness to a multi-billion dollar problem our nation is currently experiencing. As you are aware, the US Postal Service has been operating in the red for a number of years. Their annual revenues cannot surpass their expenditures and this has resulted in billions of dollars of debt and the inability to pay employee benefits.
The US Postal Service needs help and I have tried nearly everything under the sun to reach them. They simply have not responded to my inquiries. The reason I am reaching out to you Mr. President is because this issue affects all Americans. The US Postal Service handles half of the world's mail and delivers to over 155 million addresses.¹ If they do not lower their expenses it will result in the raising of rates for basic postal services. Their economic model is unsustainable.
One of the costliest problems the US Postal Service must deal with is mail which cannot be delivered. This is known as Undeliverable-As-Addressed(UAA) mail. The costs to handle this type of mail exceeds $1 billion dollars each year.² Yet it pales in comparison to the financial burden placed on businesses and government entities. Those costs exceed $20 billion dollars.³
The US Postal Service needs a 21st century solution and that solution is Mass Address™. Mass Address™ is a global addressing platform which eliminates 90% of undeliverable mail. Have you ever received mail which was addressed to someone else? If so, this is due to disparate database information. Their greatest source of losses is actually the very place which can turn the organization around. They are not looking in the right place.
I humbly request your assistance in reaching the US Postal Service. Give me an hour with the Postmaster General and her staff and I guarantee you we will turn them in the right direction. America needs the Post Office and the Post Office needs Mass Address™. Mass Address™ completely eliminates the need for manual address correction and/or updates. When the software is implemented, companies and government entities would no longer need to pay someone to update their address records or open and relabel undeliverable mail. A customer would submit one change of address and within 30 seconds the software securely disseminates that address information to every single database in the world which is in its network. Mailing lists would become obsolete. The only companies which receive these updates are those who already have the old address of the customer on file. It’s the law.⁴
Mass Address™ is privacy act compliant and does not store any information on citizens. We do not store, retain, maintain, any personally identifiable information on citizens at any time. There is no risk of a person's data being compromised because we use 256 bit military grade AES encryption to securely transmit the data.
One of the side effects of the Mass Address™ platform is that it reduces identity theft. Every year between 35-55 million Americans change their address. When the customer submits their Change-Of-Address, a record is created on a database at the US Postal Service. This database is called the National Change of Address(NCOA) database. This change of address stays on file for 4 years. After 4 years the record is destroyed. This is to comply with privacy statutes.
The problem with Undeliverable-As-Addressed mail starts the moment after the forwarding order expires on the NCOA database. You see the Post Office believes 4 years is enough time for folks to contact all of the organizations they have done business with while at their previous residence. The truth is very few people contact businesses to update their records and that is why it’s a $20 billion dollar expense for companies and the US Government.
Since 99% of the people in America do not notify every business which has their old address, these companies and/or government organizations send mail to the old address. This is where consumers Personally Identifiable Information is stolen. Last year, $16 billion dollars was stolen from 15.4 million US consumers.⁵ Identity thieves intercept mail with old addresses and use that information to create new accounts in the victim's name. There is a loophole in the system which provides identity thieves enough time to open unauthorized accounts. That window is 10-12 days. Mass Address™ would completely eliminate this opportunity.
With the current system, every single American who moves creates a window for identity theft which is initiated after 4 years. At the 4 year mark, every company who was not notified of their move will send mail to the old address. The old address is more than likely going to be inhabited by someone else and those people will have access to the previous residents personal information.
Let us stand together and stop this multi-billion dollar problem. The US Government is facing many challenges which affect all Americans and we need 21st century solutions to solve 20th century problems.
Very Respectfully,
Edward W. Hood
Founder & CEO
Mass Address, INC
XXXX XXXXXXXXX XXX
XXXXXXXXXXX, XX XXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
1. https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-facts/postal facts2016.pdf
2. https://postalpro.usps.com/address-quality-solutions/undeliverable-addressed-uaa-mail
3. http://www.pitneybowes.com/us/blog/uaa-return-mail-true-business-costs.html
4. https://www.justice.gov/opcl/privacy-act-1974
5. http://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/identity-theft-and-cybercrime
Here is the response I received from President Trump
Mass Address has changed A LOT since it was originally designed. The original design wasn't private at all. Privacy wasn't a concern to me until the Equifax Data Breach. When Equifax happened, Mass Address became a matter of national security. We are working on a video which will explain how the new platform works. We are doing something that has never been done before on the internet.