Is It Legal to Provide an Anonymous Mail Forwarding Service

[Keysle]

My question involves business law in the state of: Georgia (but I'm not concerned with just my state... more so, the entire united states)

I was wondering if it would be legal to run a business where people used 1 address as the middle man to forward to another address.

There may be a market for people who want pen pals, but don't want to give out their real address. Instead, they'll use a middle man service and identify their target based on userID's of some sort.

I googled the concept and found nothing.

[blackbird345]

There are services like this operating already so there is some legal precedent on how to operate such a business. Look at earthclassmail.com for reference. They required a postal form notarized from the person whose mail you are receiving/forwarding on their behalf. I imagine you would need to implement something very similar. So the address itself may be anonymous, but the person behind the address is very much known to your company. This provides a traceable paper trail should someone use the service for illegal purposes.

[FoolMeTwice]

How will you handle subpoenas? The trust of the service may fall into jeopardy if you do not deal with that issue properly.

[Jimhassel]

I agree with blackbird, there are some virtual office in the market that provide registered office services, company formation and related products to support thousand of small businesses. Such Virtual office are legal and being governed by law.

[flyingron]

For personal mail, people are free to hide their true identities as long as they aren't committing some fraud/crime.

For any mail involved with doing business with the public, the official identity of the user of the mail drop must be on file and disclosed to whoever asks about it.

What you are running is called a Commercial Mail Receiving Agency...here's a general info page on the USPS site...

http://faq.usps.com/eCustomer/iq/usp...Bc_usps0729%5D