As far as real superpowers? We can’t see in the future or use X-ray vision, but we have a few new tools that get us close to that when it comes to something far from the cutting edge of technology—your postal mail.

What’s Informed Delivery? Is Informed Delivery accurate?

The United States Postal Service (USPS) introduced USPS Informed Delivery in 2017, which gives those who sign up for the free service a digital preview of their incoming mail.

Although the USPS initially offered a separate app for the service, it’s now part of a larger USPS mobile app. Members also receive daily emails showing them the exterior envelopes of incoming mail.

However, like any technology, there have been hiccups. Informed Delivery doesn’t show all your mail and doesn’t always accurately predict when items arrive. The USPS also began offering direct mailers an upgrade to include digitized images, sometimes in full color, sent to the Informed Delivery customers’ email inboxes. This has given the struggling USPS a stream of income, but for customers, it’s just given them an email telling them about junk mail waiting for them in their physical mailbox.

So, it’s a little like X-ray vision, a little like predicting the future, but may not empower you to do much more than avoid a mailbox stuffed with unwanted advertisements.

Does Informed Delivery show you all mail?

Informed Delivery won’t show you what’s inside your envelopes. It’s also not offered for business addresses.

If you want to read your mail without actually checking your mailbox, a virtual mailbox takes what Informed Delivery does and supercharges it. Virtual mailboxes give customers a mailing address to receive all of their mail. Any mail sent to the address gets received and scanned in a secure processing center, and then the digital image of the mail gets uploaded into users’ accounts as a high-quality color PDF.

At Earth Class Mail, a LegalZoom company, we process the mail at a centralized, secure center. All our employees receive background checks and training. Your mail becomes a text-searchable PDF, available anywhere and on any device. Plus, your junk mail gets filtered out and recycled, so you won’t get notified each time you get a direct mail flyer.

Know when your mail arrives instantly with mail notifications

As a virtual mailbox provider, we receive and process your mail, but we can also alert you the instant you receive mail or packages.

You can decide how often to receive email notifications about incoming mail, packages, and checks.

We allow you to change alert settings based on the type of activity. You can also customize your notifications to receive weekly or monthly summaries of any of the categories, such as a month-end summary of all packages received or checks received.

How often can you receive notifications about your mail?

Some customers want instant gratification. Others don’t want the interruption. We make it so that you can set up notifications how they want them. For every type of activity on your account, you can decide whether you want an instant notification or not. Then, you can decide if you want a summary sent to you, and in what cadence.