E. Allen Smith writes (quoting me):

...

netbox.com ( http://www.netbox.com ) provides web pages and E-mail storage or forwarding for people; they let you sign up for a trial month for free. They ask for name/address/phone (which could easily be a Mailboxes Etc address and a voicemail from Mailboxes Etc or whatever) and accept payment by check or credit card.

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There's one problem with this in regards to the "no necessary connection," and that 's the governmental requirement for mail forwarding. MBE and any legal other one will want to see at least two forms of ID including one photo, and have a form that they fill out using that and send to the local post office. Anyone have a way around this problem?

I spent last summer in San Diego - it took me a couple of weeks to find a place to stay. The first day I was in town I went to an MBE and signed up for a box - showed them my Oregon ID and said "I don't have a local phone # or address because I've been in town only 12 hours. That's what I need you folks for." They cheerfully wrote down the information from the front of my drivers' license (which is 5 years out of date) and gave me a box. They also asked if there would be anyone else who'd be getting mail at my box - I could have specified a business or some roommates. They didn't need to see ID for those - so you're free to name some real or imagined roommates/friends, who might coincidentally sign up for E-mail forwarding. (Or you can just say that "Greg is my real name but John Doe is my trade name, I get mail under that name too." "Trade names" aren't so unusual for people in show business or authors or, I read recently, bill collectors. Apparently they don't want people calling them up at home hassling them. Imagine that. :) ) The folks at the San Diego MBE have been cheerfully forwarding my paper mail back here to Oregon as long as I want to keep paying the postage (plus some sum that they're adding on that's not big enough to pay attention to). It's not the kind of untraceability I'd rely on vis-a-vis a TLA, but it ought to be good enough to keep your posts to alt.sex.forbidden from showing up on your boss' desk via DejaNews, or to allow you to go ahead and piss off part-time fascists who don't have the energy to chase down the paper trail. -- "The anchored mind screwed into me by the psycho- Greg Broiles lubricious thrust of heaven is the one that thinks every temptation, every desire, every inhibition." greg@goldenbear.com -- Antonin Artaud gbroiles@darkwing.uoregon.edu