- Addresses Change
If there is anything that everyone knows, it is that addresses always change and when they change we lose our connections. This means that we are all managers of our contact lists and we do all the editing and deleting and backing up often times with disastrous results.
- Addresses Lie
All addresses are constructed by people and whether in an effort to defraud or an honest mistake we simply cannot trust addresses to be telling us the truth.
- Language Barriers
Addresses come in all formats and structures and languages. Saving these myriad number of structures in databases offers an entirely new issue.
- Addresses Can Be Cancelled
Addresses are issued by services that expect to be paid for the rights to that address. Paying rent is required to be able to use your home address as a mail drop as the US Post Service owns your mailbox. Each service has the inferent right to cancel your address at any time for any reason they deem sufficient.
- Spam
As all addresses are public knowledge, spam is inevitable.
- Multiple Address Formats
Databases have to support a wide range of address formats which leads to database bloat as well as editting mistakes at all levels.
- Regional vs. Global
Obviously, all addresses are regional as opposed to global in nature. Again leading to errors and management issues.
- Sales Calls
Unwanted sales calls come from the fact that all of our addresses are considered public in nature and anybody can use them to try and contact us.
- Stalking
As all of our addresses are considered public knowledge, databases are free to save them with out concern. Unfortunately, this leads to the option of comparing data and possibly acquiring other data that is not considered public. See Identity Matrix.
- Address Depletion
A little thought of problem is address depletion, yet we have to add area codes, phone numbers and domain names and not to mention that IP address just went through the problem enough to convert to an entirely new system. The net is rife with info about how we are running out of "good" domain names.
- Cost of Ownership
All of our current addresses require some sort of payment process, from buying a house to paying for a phone. Not making a payment forces the loss of the address. Even free emails require that we have regular access to the Internet.
- Device Specific
All of our addresses are device specific. Phone numbers for phones, home address for our mail, etc. Emails, though on the net, often get tied to specific apps on specific devices.
- Not Permanent
None of our addresses are permanent. Yes, they are long lasting, but they are not permanent, as they can be shut down either willingly or unwillingly.
- Contact List Backup
Everybody has visited the problems inherent in backing-up and restoring your contact lists.
- Loss of Contacts
Over time, we lose touch during those critical life changing moments and addresses go un-editted and we lose contacts we would rather have not lost.
- Cross System Abuses
As all businesses are forced to save a snapshot of some of your personal data as a means to identify you, your data is always at risk for abuse. It isn't a matter if you will be abused, it is a matter of when.
- Loss of Devices
Losing your device has become a personal disaster. New more secure systems are suggesting that you stuff all your critical data onto your singularly exposed private device in the hopes that you never lose it, understand how to backup everything and choose the right apps, in effect forcing all of us to become computer IT people.
- Multiple Devices
Having multiple devices increase the number of ways we can go wrong. Since addresses are device specific, we are forced to carry the management burden.
- Multiple Services
We used to have a mailing address and a phone number, now we have multiples of those and even more if we choose to use any of the new Internet services, of which their are hundreds if not thousands.