The U.S. Postal Service was sharing the postal addresses of its online customers with advertising and tech giants Meta, LinkedIn and Snap, TechCrunch has found.
On Wednesday, the USPS said it addressed the issue and stopped the practice, claiming that it was “unaware” of it.
TechCrunch found USPS was sharing customers’ information by way of hidden data-collecting code (also known as tracking pixels) used across its website. Tech and advertising companies create this kind of code to collect information about the user — such as which pages they visit — every time a webpage containing the code loads in the customer’s browser.
In the case of USPS, some of that collected data included the postal addresses of logged-in USPS Informed Delivery customers, who use the service to see photos of their incoming mail before it arrives.
