Internet of Things Mailbox Will Further Secure Your Personal Data
Maybe you haven’t sent a real, handwritten letter to anyone other than your technologically challenged grandparents in the last five or so years, but mail is still an important means of communication. Although many of our bills and other various financial documents are now digital, private information shows up in your mailbox on a regular basis.
And that can be a problem. Postal theft is an issue that thousands of people have to endure, and with so many ways to have your identity stolen, the personal data stored in your mailbox can look like a treasure trove to a nearby thief.
The Gate smart mailbox is looking to add a new level of security to your mail, powered by the Internet of Things. This new Kickstarter campaign plans to enhance your basic US mailbox and not only let you know when mail goes in, but also when it’s taken out.
The Home unit is basically a control center that connects to a smartphone, while the actual piece of hardware that attaches to the box uses motion sensor technology to alert you when it opens. If your mailbox is opened at a suspicious time—which it calculates by using a local network to approximate when the mail is going to be delivered each day—you can expect an alert to be sent via text, email, or even Twitter.
“GATE is for anyone who has an unsecured mailbox and who wants to lower that 40% chance of mail theft to keep their identity that much safer,” the Kickstarter page reads. “Seniors and the disabled can also benefit from GATE, by allowing them to not have to make unnecessary trips to the mailbox.”
If more people who are concerned over the growing number of incidents of identity theft buy into Gate, the technology will only get more advanced. The more people who join the network, the stronger and more effective it becomes, using mailbox data from around the neighborhood for everyone’s benefit.
Driverless cars, selfie-taking flying robots, smart pacifiers—the number of odd yet innovative Internet of Things devices continues to grow as we find new uses for this surplus of data.
Even if Gate doesn’t reach its meager funding goal, we’re only going to continue to see more everyday objects take on new functionality thanks to big data and the Internet of Things.
