Proof of address - should we not move on?

CiniO

It was quite always beyond me why all companies, institutions, etc. when in need of proof of address they ask for utility bills, or some other official correspondence.

Maybe this method has worked in 50's, 60's and maybe 70's. but since introductions of home printers in 80's , all those became very easy to falsify.
Nowadays, many people don't receive any utility bills in post anymore and very often no other official correspondence at all.

I tend to always print all bills from PDF, which makes it extremely easily to falsify, but they're still accepting it.


Is there any better way to do it?
How does it work in other countries?
It just looks like pointless activity to request a proof which can be falsified literally by anyone. They can as well just take people's word for proof of address.

Senna

Was vrt'ing the wife's car, they specifically say "no e-statements" which is ridiculous seen that is how we get all bills now, but thankfully they were accepted with no problem.

heroics

This is one of those things I find weird. I use paperless billing whenever I can. Probably get a letter about once a year for the pension update.

Same as you I just print bills from PDF so basically could put whatever address I want on it. Has to be a better way.

CiniO

Senna wrote: »

Was vrt'ing the wife's car, they specifically say "no e-statements" which is ridiculous seen that is how we get all bills now, but thankfully they were accepted with no problem.

The tricky part is how can they tell if bill was printed by utility company and posted to you, or send in PDF, and printed by you.

IMO in most cases they can't tell.

eeguy

CiniO wrote: »

The tricky part is how can they tell if bill was printed by utility company and posted to you, or send in PDF, and printed by you.

IMO in most cases they can't tell.

I had to submit a form online that said specifically "no ebills. Scanned paper forms only". So I printed my e-bill, scanned it and emailed that instead

4068ac1elhodqr

Heard on the news while ago that a few new banks in France are providing basic accounts to folks with no address required, handy for the transient types. Paris has also just opened the worlds largest creative hub space, which is all the rage these days, again for the Freelance types.

Victor

CiniO wrote: »

How does it work in other countries?

In quite a few countries, you have to register your residence with the local council.

LionelNashe

CiniO wrote: »

........
How does it work in other countries?
It just looks like pointless activity to request a proof which can be falsified literally by anyone. They can as well just take people's word for proof of address.

In some European countries there's an address on your National ID card. I worked for an online gambling company that accepted ID cards with addresses, or else passport & utility bill. In addition there were also some automated lookups against databases that compiled data from electoral roles and credit checking agencies and so on. We requested documents from the majority of customers when their spending hit certain thresholds, but in reality you wouldn't be poring over the documents for signs of forgery unless there was something about the account that warranted the extra attention. Most of them were requested and quickly filed away because that's what the gambling regulator said we had to do. 10 years ago, good fakes were very rare. In recent years, they got better, but the fraud prevention staff spend half their day looking at documents so they can usually spot a fake one if there's even the slightest indication.

ted1

heroics wrote: »

This is one of those things I find weird. I use paperless billing whenever I can. Probably get a letter about once a year for the pension update.

Same as you I just print bills from PDF so basically could put whatever address I want on it. Has to be a better way.

By doing so you are committing fraud and hence the company is protected

L1011

Senna wrote: »

Was vrt'ing the wife's car, they specifically say "no e-statements" which is ridiculous seen that is how we get all bills now, but thankfully they were accepted with no problem.

I had to decline opening a Rabo savings account as they wouldn't take home printed bills *or* mobile phone bills (very 1990s prejudice). My mobile bill is the only one that arrives on paper - despite having signed up for paperless. Electricity, bins, broadband are all PDF as is my bank.

I get a mortgage statement once a year meaning I have 3 months a year I can sign up for companies stuck in the 90s - nowhere will take old documents.

CiniO

Victor wrote: »

In quite a few countries, you have to register your residence with the local council.

LionelNashe wrote: »

In some European countries there's an address on your National ID card.

That's true, but still very far from good solution.

Registering with local council - sounds good, but unless all institutions/companies looking to verify your address have access to their database, it's quite useless.

I'm originally from Poland, so I know generally how it works there.
You indeed always had to register your address with local council. You had to prove that you own the place (f.e. deed) or show your lease if in rented accommodation. Owner or lease holder could obviously also register family members.
Then each person could apply for national ID with that address on it, and then use it as a proof of ID.

In fact, this solution has plenty of flaws.
Firstly owning a place and showing a deed for it to the counscil, doesn't prove you live there.
Secondly there was no way to force people exchange their ID's when they changed their address, so considering ID's are valid for 10 years, they could change address multiple times, but still use ID with old address on it as proof of address.
(f.e. I still have an Polish ID with address where I haven't lived for 20 years), but I could use it anywhere as proof of address in Poland.

So understanding it's pointless, they decided to scrap the idea of addresses on national ID's, and from last year they don't put the address on it anymore.

You still have to register your address with county council, but there's no reprecussions if you don't.
As a proof of address you can use statement from country council, but it being just a piece of paper with stamp and signature, it's equally easy to forge as Irish phone or esb bill.

Atlantic Dawn

Lots now use watermarked paper, makes it easy to identify genuine from home made.

I'd put all my statements on PDF's in the morning only for it would result in me not able to do much where proof of address required. Your probably talking to me alone about 100 pages a year printed and the cost of posting them, huge waste. They should have some kind of secure verified PDF that could be used.

ED E

It'd be an easy system for AnPost to sell.

1. Apply online to register a residency, get a "code" to represent said.
2. AnPost deliver a registered "letter" to that address and check for ID
3. Letter contains an activation code for the above residency code
4. You provide any institution with that code to lookup and validate

The businesses using the system could pay per seat fees to fund it. Maybe charge €3-5 for an application to filter out bogus requests.

LionelNashe

LionelNashe wrote: »

In some European countries there's an address on your National ID card. ..........

CiniO wrote: »

That's true, but still very far from good solution.

I was answering the question of how it's done in other countries. The only thing I heard of that sounded like a proper solution is that in Australia you can go into your post office with the physical documents that prove your identity and your address, and they physically check the stuff, and make the verification available to the businesses that you want it shared with.

https://www.digitalid.com/personal

allthedoyles

Recently I had meeting to register for Public Services Card and had difficulty finding a utility bill to bring with me . For those that havn't been there yet you will soon get your appointment letter and a utility bill is one of the requirements .
However this utility bill was not asked for and when I challebged my interviewer on this he simply said '' nah its okay ''

Victor

L1011 wrote: »

mobile phone bills

But your mobile phone isn't tied to your residence like a land line or gas supply.

(very 1990s prejudice).

Really?

billy few mates

We recently bought a car from NI for my nineteen year old daughter and it was a real struggle to find any document for proof of address which was acceptable to register the car in her name. She has no utility bills in her name as she lives at home, she gets very few letters from banks, the first one we found was rejected as more than six months out of date. Eventually we found a tax letter with her PPS number which was just within the six month limit. If we had to do it this month we would have absolutely nothing suitable...

CelticRambler

Had this problem when I went to reactivate a dormant UK account at the start of the year. I'd called in to a branch - as instructed - to make a token deposit, and unfortunately, my card had expired, so had to go through the whole proof of ID shenanigans, which I wasn't expecting.
Proof of ID - passport, no problem (my ID has stayed the same since I was born, unlike that of the bank that's changed three times since I opened the account ... :rolleyes: )

Proof of address - offered my French-issued driver's licence. No good, wasn't a UK-issued document. Remembered I had a letter from my Irish company's bank with my internet log-in details. No good either - can't have just any old headed notepaper from another bank, with all your details, has to be a bank statement. Offered a screenshot of a statement from a phone-only bank account (which required address verification). Nope, "we have to be able to scan it" ... But a few days later, he was quite happy to accept a "utility bill", supposedly originating from a supplier of electricity, downloaded from the internet and printed by myself.

It was genuine - although it didn't contain any billing information, just my meter and contract numbers - but it seemed completely ridiculous to accept this kind of DIY "proof" while refusing a state-issued document.

Mrs OBumble

billy few mates wrote: »

We recently bought a car from NI for my nineteen year old daughter and it was a real struggle to find any document for proof of address which was acceptable to register the car in her name. She has no utility bills in her name as she lives at home, she gets very few letters from banks, the first one we found was rejected as more than six months out of date. Eventually we found a tax letter with her PPS number which was just within the six month limit. If we had to do it this month we would have absolutely nothing suitable...

So she would have to call revenue and ask them to send her a balancing statement for last year.



Related hilarity: whenever I rent a car from one company they insist on being given a landline phone number. Luckily they never test it to check i can be reached on the number... or that it is an actual landline not a skype local number or similar.

BlinkingLights

I had a bank refuse my driving license as proof of address, even though it's physically embedded in the card and verified far more seriously than an Eir bill would be.

I mean, I could quite literally change the name on a utility account somewhere else into my name and I would have 'proof of address'. Then I could change it back a couple of bills later.

Utility companies do not verify anything when they setup accounts. As long as they get paid, that's all they really care. It's ludicrous to think that this is a sensible way of proving addresses. You might as well just take people at their word as do that.

Also, what if you're an adult in a house share or, your bills are all in your partners name?
I know my dad had this issue recently as all the bills in the house are in my mother's name.

It was resolved by just changing an account over to his name, proving that there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to relying on utility bills to prove anything, other than someone rang up Electric Ireland and gave them a name.

Alun

Even the Immigration Bureau insist on utility bills as proof of residence, not only that but 3 different ones per year per application over a 5 year period. We're currently thinking of applying for Irish citizenship and having gone through our records and even though luckily I keep everything, we may still have a problem, as some bills are in my name, some in my wife's name and some are joint, such as bank accounts, and I don't think I can find 3 different ones for each of us, how many households have 6 different paper utility bills coming in?

the_pen_turner

I went in to get a new phone and contract a few years ago. .
My contract wasn't up for a week so I waited but got the phone
they sell me the phone and filled in my address etc on the paperwork.
When I went back I brought one proof of address. But they wanted 2 . Ialso had was the receipt for the phone. They accepted that no problem. They never posted it to me just handed it to me when I bought the phone. Crazy

Samuel T. Cogley

I love the double whammy we get in this country. Not only is the proof of address thing stupid, half the time it's proving the address:

Paddy O'Shay - the one with the blue car - actual name Peter but everyone calls him Paddy.
Ballygobackwards
Co. Galway

"Ah shure I've never heard of an Eircode."

I once had someone tell me it was 'Across from the creamery" Sure enough the fecking address was in the database like that AND IT WASN'T HIM! Don;t get me started on how many eejits have named their place 'The Bungalow' in Co. Cork.

L1011

Victor wrote: »

But your mobile phone isn't tied to your residence like a land line or gas supply.

The credit and background checks they've gone through are probably more thorough.

Victor wrote: »

Really?

Do you not remember the 1990s?

Del2005

CiniO wrote: »

The tricky part is how can they tell if bill was printed by utility company and posted to you, or send in PDF, and printed by you.

IMO in most cases they can't tell.

I got pinged for not having a proper proof of address after I'd scaned a letter to good. Got told it was an emailed letter and needed to submit something else, changed the settings on the scanner to show the edges of the page and they excepted it.

plodder

Victor wrote: »

In quite a few countries, you have to register your residence with the local council.

If you suggested that here, there would be howls of "police state" etc. But, I think it would be a good idea. When you look at the crazy amount of work that goes into maintaining the electoral register, it would do a better job, and solve other problems too.