[mttjj]

I definitely agree in principle. But - without doxxing myself - I input my zip and the city is not correct. It’s a very close neighboring suburb (where the boundaries are definitely blurry) but it’s not the city on all the legal documents for my current house.

[aewens]

My brother’s house is in the same boat. Unfortunately, not all ZIP codes exclusively belong to one city.

[cozzyd]

And boats can move from city to city!

[Maxious]

Boats can have zip codes too. Well one boat. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/on-the-water-with-amer...

[matthewbauer]

Yeah city is not fully a function of zip. ~I think state is though.~* I believe when multiple cities share a zip code USPS uses the larger one. Usually the wrong city will get delivered though, probably not guaranteed.

* correcting myself, some zip codes do cross state lines

[krater23]

Can't say anything about the US, but in Germany when more than one cities have the same zip code it's just not important because there is only one sorting center for all cities with the same zip and they just sort per street address.

[bob1029]

Zip code is a very powerful factor from a PII perspective.

https://dataprivacylab.org/projects/identifiability/index.ht...

[ezfe]

Legal address doesn't matter for mail, and all of this stuff is about mail/shipping. This includes billing addresses.

I would have assumed that you knew that. I know people whose ZIP code belongs to a neighboring town (because mail works that way) and it basically becomes their de-facto address.

[mttjj]

Probably not safe to assume my level of knowledge about any subject matter

[ezfe]

If that's a self-own then fair enough.

But if you get mail to an address with a ZIP code listed to another city then surely you're aware of this as it comes up constantly for anyone who ever receives mail or packages.

[petee]

Some areas have duplicate, or very similar street names (ie, 'ave' vs. 'street') I don't think its that much of an ask that a website lets you enter your address correctly

[esrauch]

Yeah it should auto fill but not stop you from changing it, best experience 98% of the time.

I just looked it up and apparently there's some cases of zip codes that do go across state lines too, but it's rare.

[ezfe]

There is a canonical full address for every mailbox in the US. Would be curious to see what these houses show.

My experience living in towns that received mail from other towns is your canonical address IS the other town.

[esrauch]

FWIW I have received mail from the USPS in places that had no canonical full address as well. It's not the case in reality that the USPS only delivers mail to mailboxes that have an associated entry in their canonical database here in "messy" reality.

[ezfe]

Street name isn’t auto completed here…

[kube-system]

The legal address can absolutely matter for shipping when there are legal requirements in regards to the thing you’re shipping.