▲ 151 points
back
64 comments
I don't love google. But this is borderline rage bait.
The license thing had nothing to do with Google. The DMV doesn't use Google maps to mint licenses.
The po box thing also has nothing to do with Google. That's just a policy largely related to the bank secrecy act.
> For an entire week, I was a non-person to this country’s bureaucracy
It took a week to update their address. An out of date address doesn't make you a "non person." A handful of self-service online portals rejected their address change, and they couldn't use their po box for bank or license.
Here's the story,
"We moved to an extremely rural town. It's so off the grid, we had to go to the post office in person to get the address changed. Because we don't get mail at the house, me and my partner had to acknowledge that each of us lived there at the dmv. All in all, it took a week to sort out."
Google isn't the authority for addresses. For the US, Google probably buys the bulk USPS Postal Service Address Information System to get their data. The Post Office has people on the ground, unlike Google, which is a data aggregator.
First, look up your address in the USPS ZIP Code retrieval system.[1] If it's in there, the USPS knows where you are. If your address isn't listed, "contact the local Post Office and request their assistance in resolving the problem." They can submit updates to the database. Once that entry is right, if anyone questions your address, point them at USPS ZIP Code Lookup.
I've had to do some of this. I live at the end of a private street where the neighbors put up a street sign, in a ZIP code that crosses a city line, next to a road easement for an un-built road. USPS, Pacific Gas and Electric, and the County of San Mateo all got this right. The official data is correct.
Open Street Map, Google, and the low-end GPS systems used by delivery drivers had problems. I had to log into Open Street Map, which had my street and the next street confused. Fixed that. Gradually, this propagated to Doordash, UPS, FedEx, etc. It took about a year before Tom-Tom updated, and I used to get calls from lost Doordash drivers. Putting up large high-quality house numbers on the house and gatepost also helped.
Never had any problems with banks, voting, taxes, or anything official. Only low-end service providers.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who read this and thought a week to sort out this sort of thing sounded totally reasonable.
> The po box thing also has nothing to do with Google. That's just a policy largely related to the bank secrecy act.
Also some companies like mine don't accept these PO box addresses because the some carriers we use can't deliver to it.
If at all possible, have a family lawyer. You just won't believe how helpful it is in some of these edge cases to have an officer of the court able to attest based on personal knowledge.
Being someone in a voluntary state of nomadism has made me realize that not having a fixed address is de facto illegal. Even worse, it cuts you off from all the things that are “privileges”, but essentially essential. A bank account, phone, driver’s license and so on will all require a residential address. This person even has a home, they just don’t have a recognized address.
I’m lucky enough (like maybe most people voluntarily in my position) to have family that can support me with this. But what about the others? And other people who aren’t doing this voluntarily? It’s all held together with a wink and a nod when you just have to put something down.
Unfortunately, I don’t see it changing any time soon. The unhoused isn’t a strong lobbying block. Not to mention the difficulty in voting in this situation. I get not being able to vote on municipal issues if this status was legally recognized, but surely I should have a say in state (California won’t let my “citizenship” and associated taxes go easily) and national politics.
For the reasons listed in the article, it’s probably only going to get worse. Bummer.
Estonian E-citizenship saved my butt a few years ago when due to fire I was forced to be homeless in the US, and as a nomadic van dweller found it very hard without a physical address and documents to prove I exist. My Estonian E-citizenship was all I had left, and offered me a lifeline when I got forced into a nomadic lifestyle without a permanent physical address. This sucks, especially in a country like the U.S., where residency requirements can hinder almost all essential activities. For someone like me working as a contract engineer, that access to e-services—like banking, digital signatures, and business registration allowed me to maintain some seamless continuity of professional operations throughout the ordeal. The digital infrastructure allowed me to maintain financial and legal stability, despite lacking a documents and a U.S. address. Estonian E-citizenship, as a US citizen was ironically easier to get than replacements for the national documents that were lost in the fire. Worth having! Pretty powerful tool for maintaining professional independence and resilience. Our systems in the U.S. seem totally cave man rock and stone in comparison.
Okay, but there is a plethora of problems that I don't see a simple solution for. How do you prove you're nomading primarily in California? Or at least long term enough to have say in local politics.. and what is sufficient? 180 days a year? So if you move around 3 states you have no residency..? Voting is the right you get.. but how about the obligations? Are you on the hook for state income taxes?
There are additional issues.. like say getting served a jury summons
Having a registered address is a bit of clunky solution to a host of problems.
I've lived a decade abroad and I honestly often have zero understanding of my legal status in the US. I can sort of figure out my status with the IRS - but for instance, am I still a resident of California? (the last state I lived in) Can I vote for state issues there? Can I renew my driver's license there? Do I need to pay taxes there?
Am I stateless and have no way to get a license to use when I go back for Christmas? It's all a weird vague greyzone. For instance I have a license registered with a family member's address.. but I ignore jury summons entirely
Every address you've ever officially used follows you forever. So it's not so much that not having a fixed address is illegal, it's illegal to erase or hide your residency history entirely. I still have mail that goes to relatives houses in states I haven't lived in over a decade, and there are mail-in ballots addressed to dead relatives being shipped to their previous residences as well.
As an aside, if anyone still has faith in this electoral system, or any institution in America for that matter, I don't think they're adequately prepared for the Kafkaesque chaos that's about to become commonplace, if it hasn't already.
In the US, you do not need a residential address; you need a domicile. Your domicile determines e.g. what taxes you pay, and where you register your vehicles. You can't opt out of taxes ;)
Your domicile can be a family member's or friend's residence, or you can pay a company to provide you with that service ("Commercial Mail Handling Agent").
I "lived" in a mail cubicle of a service provider company for some 3 years, while driving around the country in a motorhome.
For bank KYC rules, the bank's automation may recognize and refuse prominent companies like that, much like they refuse PO boxes. A human may sometimes override that decision. That's unrelated to definition of domicile, and banks will generally also accept KYC information for a family member instead. Or you plan ahead and get KYC'ed before you move into non-traditional domicile situation.
It's not just the US, (Western?) Europe is exactly the same. You have to have an address with your name on the mailbox, and all legal verification works through the mail. No name on the mailbox - you are nobody. And it goes without saying: without an address, you won't get any "privileges" here.
> Because of Google, our address wasn’t even present for the USPS
How does the author know this bit?
I've lived on streets that definitely existed in Google maps, but where the exact address definitely didn't exist in USPS address system for like 6 months until they finally updated it, which caused... a very similar same set of issues described in this article. This has happened to me twice.
In my experience at least, USPS doesn't give a shit what Google says or not. Maybe it's changed since then? I would require some serious convincing though.
> How does the author know this bit?
They cannot know it, strictly speaking, because it is false. The USPS is legally required to deliver to every address. They certainly don’t depends on Google maps for compliance, or use it as a source of truth.
Yeah it's likely the other way around. USPS didn't know about the address and therefore Google didn't either. I don't buy that USPS uses anyone else's databases for addresses.
I recently moved to India. Addresses are a mess (I won’t even try describing it), and I suspect that Google Maps has valid street addresses for a fairly small fraction of the total population, probably even under half the population in big cities. Yet quite a few things I’ve been dealing with have been using Google Maps data (based on detectable idiosyncrasies), with a couple even not allowing custom entries!
In the USA these sorts of issues may be troublesome to a small fraction of the people so that government and business can largely ignore it without it inconveniencing too many people, but in India it’s sheer madness. So you know what happens instead? You just don’t deal with the dodgy phone app or website, but instead ring the company’s local agent, or go into the company’s shop, or something like that, and they bypass their broken system. Exactly the same as the conclusion of this article.
India’s digitalisation of things is frequently very half-baked. Maybe the end state in another twenty years will be worthwhile, but in the mean time, things are often worse than they were before the attempt was made.
I worked on software that sent letters to Indian addresses some years ago. We saw things like:
Mr. So-and-so
Third house on the right, past the old tree
Near government building #5
Smalltown, Kerala
And then we’d do cash-on-delivery payments to these addresses. And it worked! I always imagined working for the Indian postal service would be interesting every day.
Reminded me of: https://youtu.be/LdlLUogNYMw?si=0PZa-7PcAoIeuYdq&t=382
Here they show an app where you just make your order to your current location. Which I guess would make sense if Addresses are a mess, no address needed just a GPS location.
> Addresses are a mess (I won’t even try describing it), and I suspect that Google Maps has valid street addresses for a fairly small fraction of the total population, probably even under half the population in big cities. Yet quite a few things I’ve been dealing with have been using Google Maps data (based on detectable idiosyncrasies), with a couple even not allowing custom entries!
In the USA these sorts of issues may be troublesome to a small fraction of the people so that government and business can largely ignore it without it inconveniencing too many people, but in India it’s sheer madness. So you know what happens instead? You just don’t deal with the dodgy phone app or website, but instead ring the company’s local agent, or go into the company’s shop, or something like that, and they bypass their broken system.
Can you give some examples and contrast those with the US?
FWIW, address-to-map-location and directions in India can be unreliable on Google Maps, and are borderline useless on Apple Maps.
Yes, the problem is that once digitalization becomes even half-workable, then it becomes an excuse to remove these "deal directly with a human being" options as a cost-cutting measure.
There ought to be laws about digital options being removed first in these situations, at least where government or businesses that operate infrastructure (like delivery companies) are concerned. (Strong laws, some laws for this already exist, but they tend to be weak and/or do not last long, since they go against the tendency of the state to grab ever more power.)
There were a few things that need to be clarified as to how addresses are recorded. The author says:
> Because of Google, our address wasn’t even present for the USPS
In fact, USPS has its own database of addresses which Google most certainly solicits their data from. I know because I have dealt with customers who have found the same issue. We urge anyone with this issue to direct the issue to the USPS Address Management System Offices to file their address. Other services like those from Auctane (ShipStation, ShipEngine) references this data too.
https://postalpro.usps.com/ppro-tools/address-management-sys...
I had a similar experience- moved to an area with a new ZIP code (<2 years old) and while most services were fine, Google Address Verification didn't know it existed. I couldn't use my credit card anywhere that used Google to see if the address was real. Multiple customer service reps said there was nothing they could do; my address was just not valid for their system. I imagine it eventually made it in to Google's vault of 'knowledge,' but by that time I had moved away to a place Google thought acknowledged the existence of.
This is the postmodern, "hyperreal" condition alluded to by Baudrillard and others of his ilk, where the documents and symbols of identity and personhood are elevated above the physical matters of fact themselves. It suffices to simply produce language of identity or language of personhood to establish a fact, and absence thereof implies nonexistence.
Ultimately, according to this postmodern ethos, reality is mediated by power and consensual narrative; therefore, despite your individual lived experience, the fact that Google does not recognize your existence at this address makes your nonexistence and nonresidence actually the case, because Google has the social gravitas to assert its own view of the world as actually factual.
If one finds this state of affairs as intolerable as the author of TFA, in which one can definitely inhabit an address despite there being no record of it in the Akashic cyberrecords, then one had best discover how to demonstrate the absurdity and undesirability of said postmodern philosophy.
They don't find that state of affairs intolerable in practice, otherwise they would have already taken steps to not only avoid themselves to use GAFAMs, but also to associate themselves with businesses whose websites don't work if you block requests to GAFAMs and/or only have Android/iOS apps. And started doing it years ago. (I can bet they didn't, because otherwise I expect that they would have give examples how they did so, this article being a perfect opportunity.)
Instead, if you scroll down, they themselves have a Github account !
It's a bit like a doctor complaining about the prevalence of lung cancer, while themselves chain-smoking in their own practice, during patient consultations.
> These tools can easily be manipulated further to label anyone outside of the white, heteronormative, cisgender conglomerate as a non-person in the eyes of the larger system. All they need is a huge company like Google to “not recognize” a few key factors like whole neighborhoods in redlined areas or a gender marker (as compared to a birth certificate or something).
What a weird rant at the end. Last I checked, there is no gender.google.com, and straight up erasing people from maps for their race/gender/ethics/whatever is not something I have heard of happening.
FWIW, renaming neighborhoods, including on Google Maps, to erase race and ethnicity is something which does happen.
> Research in Philadelphia by sociologist Jackelyn Hwang shows that gentrification not only shifts the demographics of a given area, but leads to divergent definitions of neighborhoods.
> Minority residents were more likely to call a wide area one neighborhood, named “South Philly.” White residents, by contrast, divided the same area into multiple neighborhoods, such as “Graduate Hospital,” “G-Ho,” “So-So,” “South Rittenhouse,” “South Square” and “Southwest Center City,” splitting up areas by their socioeconomic characteristics and crime levels.
> In such cases, the use of different neighborhood definitions served to legitimize one’s presence in a community. Neighborhoods do this by evoking a sense of place for residents, describing a relationship that the place has with someone’s biography, imagination and personal experiences. The names create boundaries between those who are perceived to belong to these communities – and those who do not.
- https://finance-commerce.com/2019/04/whats-driving-businesse...
I think he's talking about the potential for abuse as opposed to something that's currently happening. I'm trans and even sites where I don't look at queer content at all seem to figure that out. It's not hard to imagine how that could end up being abused.
I liked the conclusion: gratitude for a human in the loop who could make human decisions. Like the old IBM presentation said, “A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.”
(Of course greed, stupidity and laziness will cause us to use computers for all sorts of management decisions and we’ll destroy lives as a result.)
>Go in with enough random people to say you lived at a place and that was more legitimate than a letter with your address on top from a propane company that served half the state.
While the propane company's letter should have been sufficient, ultimately these kinds of realities are socially determined, so I don't think it's all that crazy to expect attestations from other people to substitute for other official documentation.
Also, the one big takeaway I had from this blog is that government entities should use a government-run maps application for official duties. At least then you have someone you can hold accountable (i.e. your congressional representative) for any errors that appear. Actually, maybe the author could reach out to their congressperson anyways. If the USPS has a contract with Google to use Maps, they could in theory require a redress mechanism as part of the next contract.
The mention of “white, heteronormative, cisgender” at the end seems so shoehorned in that you’d think the author had a gun to their head to include it.
Edit: I say this because pretending it’s the “white, heteronormative, cisgender” crowd in the Bay Area oppressing everyone unlike them in… rural America of all places is hilarious. If anything this entire article is evidence of the opposite given the relative demographics of each.
So you're just mad that they said the evil gender words? Because in the literal next sentence they qualify the mention with realistic examples. Hardly the definition of "shoe-horning".
I think you're just primed to notice it. Frequency illusion. It's ironic because based on your comment, you couldn't care less, yet her we are.
Don't hate the player, hate the game. The social incentives are arranged such that individuals are encouraged to use shibboleths and loaded language of this nature lest they be branded as an enemy. Such is the consequence of rhetoric such as "silence is violence" or "if you're not with us, you're against us," that forces nonbinary folks to declare binary allegiance as either an Ally or an undesirable. Absence of such loaded language that clearly identifies one as an ally thus implies that they are an enemy, and rejects the possibility of a spectrum of views that exists between two extremes. Those who fail to declare or abstain are excommunicated and identified as hostile actors (irrespective of their own self-identification).
I suspect it merely aligns with the author’s worldview. Didn’t come across as intentionally checking a box.
Perhaps this says more about you than the author. At the very least not imaginative enough to picture someone being genuine. Or perhaps this just isn’t the right sort of thing to discuss on hn?
As much as I don't like Google, I'm not sure if Google is the issue here.
* Google's autocomplete not having the address is different from USPS not having the address. It depends on who the bank was using as address verification. At least in my area, addresses are handled by the county road commission, and it cost money to apply for one. I believe there is more paperwork with the post office to then get mail delivered.
* PO Boxes are also not really a Google issue? A lot of places just don't accept PO Boxes. Using a mailbox service at a UPS is nicer for this reason. It looks like a normal address + number so it's usually accepted. Though you still can't use it to register for a driver's license, I was able to use one to register for a bank account, when I lived in a tiny home for a bit.
Before reading the article, I would not have believed the proposition that the US Post Office relies on Google to determine what is a valid address.
I still don't believe it; no evidence was presented.
Are you sure all these companies you dealt with are verifying addresses against Google Maps data? It could have been the "official" data missing the street (not sure which entity maintains that, postal services?) - in that case surely there is a way to get it fixed.
I’ve seen this happen when the people move in and aren’t technically in the city they thought they were. They were right on the border IIRC. Ride-share apps and Google had no clue until I entered the city adjacent to the one they thought they lived in. They somehow still got packages. I guess the zip, street and number combo were enough.
The root problem is the mandates all countries now have to root out money laundering. "Know your customer" laws have happened in lots of places.
"Proof of address" is a thorny problem. Mail is the obvious approach but quickly falls down in many cases. In many parts of the world official mail has all but ceased (web, email is cheaper.) In lots of areas PO boxes are used. Or, you know, Accounts may be in my wife's name so we don't get letters to me or my kids.
The Google part is fun, but basically irrelevant. There are new streets, new buildings, being built all the time. That might be your first hurdle, but it's not the last.
And that's before we talk about folks who don't have an address at all. Live in your car (or RV) - good luck with that.
You'll be shocked, shocked, to discover that this has had precisely no effect on money laundering... but hey, war on crime right?
Add the street & address to OpenStreetMap if it hasn't been done already.
A few banks allow you to change your address online, a digital statement will then show the updated address. A printout works around proof-of-address requirements.
----
> On a larger scale, it made me concerned for the use of AI in these kinds of situations. What if I wasn’t able to intercept a human postmaster who could then look at my documents and say that I was able to have a PO Box to receive mail from outside of town?
GDPR Article 22:
> The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her.
I had a couple issues for a Couple of days when I moved into my current places until the post office fixed it. We just brought a copy of the lease and they accepted that. Every address needs to be registered with Auspost pretty sure and a lot businesses look up in that if they're doing any kind of checks.
Google maps however: I was working on a tool to speed up filling addresses into a CRM using google autoccomplete/places, and basically found all the bugs I could just on my own address.
Autocomplete is just for suggestions as you type. Places API gives you distinct locations but you can take the id's from autocomplete and pass them to places to get full address info.
* Autocomplete and Places are not always in sync, so sometimes autocomplete gives you an place id that Places API no longer recognised and would 404. * Some place ids are sythesized, these usually work, but part of the address info is encoded in the ID and you can't guartee these id's will last. * My address would autocomplete "This Street East, Suburb" but the ID would give "This Street, East Suburb" a different street and suburb. * Any address with a Unit number: so every apartment building duplex etc, would Simple forget the Unit number on autocomplete. As google didn't a db of all the werid types of unit numbers we have in Australia it just accepted what you typed before the / (So there's different types of unit names: LOT, UNIT, SUITE etc but Australia post recommends only using this format: 5/2 where 5 is unit 2 is street number). Until you hit complete then it would just forget it. Then found it handles it even when the unit number isn't only digits. (eg 2a/21) * Completely confused if the address "Doesn't exist" yet. Our product was sometimes used for new buildings that wern't done yet and deliver address was for a street in a housing development. It got real confused then.
I could work around nearly all of these. But so many apps does it come up in that I have to fix or override (I've only ran into one site that refused to accept my address with a Google lookup).
Worst cases is however. Tried ordering meds through an app: it sends the script to a Chemist near you and orders through doordash. I can see on my order the correct address in the Chemist app. I get a call from the doordash guy saying there's no unit number and sure enough the doordash status page doesn't have the unit number (and the location marking is wrong, which I assume is related) A second time i order fast food through the companies website, as their menulog was disabled. And that also ended up on doordash and ran into the same probrlem (and the person just left the food at a random fire exit of my building)
Could filing individual lawsuits in small claims court against all the entities involved help?
I have a similar half-of-a-problem
My street name is officially an abbreviation, but half of the map services have it with the full name, which makes sense in some way and makes it easier to search, but it's not the legal name of the street.
So if a website auto-fills from map service, I usually need to try both versions until one works.
Apple used to have the full version until I sent them a report; now they fixed it in Maps, but I still have it wrong in my "home address" and I have no idea how to fix it there.
It's not really that big of a deal though. But yeah as OP says, AI will make sorting out this stuff harder, not easier