Japan Post Launches 'Digital Address' System (japantimes.co.jp)
- Reference: 0177834083
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/05/28/1638216/japan-post-launches-digital-address-system
- Source link: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2025/05/27/companies/japan-post-digital-address/
> Under [2]the system , users can input these seven-digit codes on online shopping websites, and their addresses will automatically appear on the sites.
>
> People can obtain digital addresses by registering with Japan Post's Yu ID membership service. Their digital addresses will not change even if their physical addresses change. Their new addresses will be linked to the codes if they submit notices of address changes.
[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2025/05/27/companies/japan-post-digital-address/
[2] https://lp.da.pf.japanpost.jp/
Post office (Score:2)
Postcodes anyone?
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure about you but where I live my postcode doesn't reference back to my, and only my, specific mailing address. AFAIK only Ireland does that. It also doesn't follow me when I move away.
Re: (Score:2)
It's more than Ireland. The UK, and the Netherlands typically identify individual streets or in some cases individual houses. Where I live for example our postcode is unique to the 10 houses on our side of the street. The other side has a different post code. Our street itself (which isn't very long) has about 7 different post codes. Add the house number and you don't need to know the state, city, or street name to send mail.
Re: Post office (Score:2)
It's ok. UPRN is there for minutiae.
Re: (Score:2)
US Post code + route number is pretty adequate with human mail carriers. I see my postman IRL probably 2-3x a month and he knows who I am, if you send a letter to my post code + route number with the name smudged illegibly it will almost certainly get delivered to the correct house. Not all mail carriers are as social as mine though.
Re: (Score:2)
> Postcodes anyone?
It's more like a Social Security number that maps to your current address by design.
What Three Words? (Score:3)
I wish what3words would have taken off. It's a great way to communicate your location using common words that are easy to pronounce and understand.
Re: (Score:2)
what3words doesn't follow you after you move to a new place.
Address Privacy (Score:3)
If you took away the ability for the public to resolve the numbers to a location, you'd have a good system for keeping your address private even when buying items online. Given corpos propensity to sell/leak data, I'd love such a system.
Slashdot was FIRST (Score:2)
Yes, our very own Slashdot established the norm, and yes, it was called UID.
Years later, the Japanese code ided it was a terrific idea, so they adopted it, but they couldn't pick a name, and lazily decided there was nothing wrong with calling it yu id
Stalkers & Privacy? (Score:2)
So there will now be a system, which lets companies forever track your physical location? They get a seven-digit code that they can then keep updating to get your address even after you move? Is there something in place to stop them from selling this information? Can I generate a new code if I want? We all know various companies will leak this information, and it takes just one. Will stalkers use this to continually track people? What they need a seven-digit code which never gets resolved to an address (t
Oh look, the invented pointers (Score:1)
:P
Might work in Japan, but not world wide (Score:2)
Seven digits is not nearly enough for world wide adoption of this system.
There are 8 Billion people in the word right now. So, 8 billion people / 9,999,999 addresses = ~800 people per address. Then we should expect there to be roughly 800 people living in each household? I didn't think they even made apartments that big.
Re: (Score:1)
If you read the summary (I know that's asking a lot on Slashdot), this system includes letters and numbers
Wondering why? (Score:2)
Okay, but why? Some address in Japan are quite convoluted to our way of doing things. For example my in laws’ family name is in effect the house’s street number. If they sold their house and moved the new owners name would become the new street address. They don’t live in a remove village or anything. They live in metro area of about 10 million people about a mile and a half from a rail station where it’s a 15 minute ride to downtown Nagoya. I don’t see how this really solves
It's not DNS. It can't be DNS. It's DNS (Score:3)
One would think IT people hate systems that convert between numbers and names enough not to invent yet another.