Deutsche Post Adress

Deutsche Post Adress GmbH und Co. KG is a German address management company operating as a joint venture between Deutsche Post and Bertelsmann/Arvato. Headquartered in Gütersloh in the eastern Westphalian region of North Rhine-Westphalia, it also maintains a sales office in Frankfurt am Main and customer service operations in Mayen, Rhineland-Palatinate. The Deutsche Post Adress group includes two wholly owned subsidiaries: ABIS GmbH in Frankfurt am Main and RISER ID Services GmbH in Berlin. The company positions itself as a competence centre for address management, offering holistic industry solutions that help businesses maintain efficient contact with their customers. Its core services involve checking, correcting, updating, cleaning and maintaining customer address data. It markets itself as the market leader for address updating and address research in Germany. Its flagship address updating service, marketed under the name "Postadress Move", uses a relocation database built from consumers' and companies' mail forwarding orders to update business customer addresses. Under the name "Postadress Gone", it supplies undeliverable addresses and deceased-person information for database cleansing. International address management services are also offered, and business master data updates — such as changes of registered office, mergers, legal form changes or company renamings — are handled under the "Postadress Business" brand. Address research for untraceable individuals and companies is offered under the "Adressresearch" brand, drawing primarily on an interface to more than 5,000 registration offices. According to the company, roughly 90% of mail-order companies, 70% of the largest insurers and a large share of banks use Deutsche Post Adress relocation information to update their customer data. Around 4 million private individuals report a move via mail forwarding order each year, representing about half of all people who move annually in Germany. Each relocation address from a forwarding order — where the user has not objected to the address being passed on — is estimated to be updated up to ten times at €1.20 each. Deutsche Post Adress also publishes relocation studies under the title "So zieht Deutschland um" (How Germany Moves), with editions in 2018, 2021 and 2024, and operates the relocation portal umziehen.de. The company has attracted criticism over the de facto monopoly on relocation addresses arising from Deutsche Post's mail forwarding orders, and in 2013 it received a Big Brother Award from the digital rights organisation digitalcourage.

Deutsche Post Adress GmbH und Co. KG operates as a joint venture between Deutsche Post and Bertelsmann/Arvato. Its headquarters are in Gütersloh, the eastern Westphalian district town in North Rhine-Westphalia, with a sales office in Frankfurt am Main and customer service in Mayen, Rhineland-Palatinate. The Deutsche Post Adress group comprises two wholly owned subsidiaries: ABIS GmbH in Frankfurt am Main and RISER ID Services GmbH in Berlin. The company's business is built on address management for corporate customers. Its relocation database, marketed as "Postadress Move", updates business customer addresses using current relocation information drawn from consumers' and companies' mail forwarding orders. Under the name "Postadress Gone", it supplies undeliverable addresses and deceased-person information for cleansing customer databases. International address management services complement these offerings. Updates to business master data — such as changes of registered office, mergers, changes of legal form or company renamings — are provided under the "Postadress Business" designation. Address research is offered under the "Adressresearch" brand, helping companies find deliverable addresses for untraceable private individuals and companies. Current addresses of private individuals are primarily queried through an interface to more than 5,000 registration offices, supplemented by other unspecified "secure" sources. Where these searches are unsuccessful, additional services are offered: under "long-term observation", the address is regularly compared against reference data sets, so that if the missing person later re-registers or carries out other activities giving their address, the new address is reported to the client. Adding telephone numbers to existing customer addresses and telephone research complete the service range. According to the company, roughly 90% of mail-order companies, 70% of the largest insurers and a large share of banks use Deutsche Post Adress relocation information to update their customer data. Around 4 million private individuals report a move via mail forwarding order each year — about 50% of all people who move annually. Because of the high quality of data from mail forwarding orders and the large number of relocation addresses, Deutsche Post Adress can be described as the market leader in the marketing of relocation addresses. Each relocation address from a forwarding order, where the user has not objected to the address being passed on, is estimated to be updated up to ten times at €1.20 each. In 2018, 2021 and 2024, Deutsche Post Adress published studies on the relocation behaviour of the German population under the title "So zieht Deutschland um". The analysis drew on the company's own data as well as information from a survey of people moving, conducted by the Bielefeld market research institute Interrogare. The company also operates umziehen.de, a portal with content on the topic of moving. People moving can use checklists or order online services such as the mail forwarding order or the relocation notification. Companies such as DIY stores or energy suppliers use the portal to present relocation-related offers. Criticism has focused on the company's position in the market. In connection with Deutsche Post AG's former monopoly on postal services, the company still holds a de facto monopoly on relocation addresses through mail forwarding orders. Companies and consumers are thus effectively forced to submit to this procedure at fees set by Deutsche Post AG. Critics complain that there is insufficient competition. If there were competition for consumers' relocation addresses, fees for the mail forwarding order would be expected to fall and consumers would share in the value of the relocation address. The nationwide political discussion in 2012/2013 about amending the registration law showed the explosiveness of registration office queries by businesses. Once queried residents' registration data was cached in so-called data pools and used multiple times without the query process having to be repeated. At the time there was a risk that "shadow databases" would emerge based on registration office data, further restricting informational self-determination and whose use was difficult to control. Data protection advocates criticised this practice. In its 2010 annual financial statements, Deutsche Post Adress itself saw the risk that such data collections could be generally prohibited against the background of data misuse cases. Not least because of this criticism, but above all because of its collection of addresses and their merging with other data, the company was awarded a Big Brother Award in 2013, the negative prize of the digitalcourage association.

• 2018

  Deutsche Post Adress published a relocation study under the title "So zieht Deutschland um".

• 2013

  Deutsche Post Adress was awarded a Big Brother Award by the digitalcourage association, mainly because of its collection of addresses and their merging with other data.

• 2012

  The nationwide political discussion in 2012/2013 about amending the registration law highlighted the explosiveness of registration office queries by businesses.

• 2010

  In its 2010 annual financial statements, Deutsche Post Adress itself saw the risk that data collections based on registration office data could be generally prohibited against the background of data misuse cases.

Market leader for address updating and address research in Germany; competence centre for holistic address management industry solutions.

• Postadress Move

  Relocation database that updates business customer addresses based on current relocation information from consumers' and companies' mail forwarding orders.

• Postadress Gone

  Provides undeliverable addresses and deceased-person information for cleansing customer databases.

• Postadress Business

  Updates business master data such as changes of registered office, mergers, changes of legal form or company renamings.

• Adressresearch

  Address research for untraceable private individuals and companies, primarily via an interface to more than 5,000 registration offices, supplemented by other secure sources and long-term observation.

• International address management services

  Complementary international address management services.

• umziehen.de

  Relocation portal with content on moving, checklists and online services such as mail forwarding orders and relocation notifications; used by companies such as DIY stores and energy suppliers to present relocation-related offers.

• Big Brother Award 2013

• Criticism of de facto monopoly on relocation addresses

• Data protection concerns over registration office data pools

Read more

1. 1Adressmanagement & Adressaktualisierung | Deutsche Post Adressdeutschepost.de
2. 2Briefempfang - analog und digital | Deutsche Postdeutschepost.de
3. 3Mobile Apps für Postversand & Kommunikation | Deutsche Postdeutschepost.de
4. 4Online-Services rund um das Werben mit Print-Mailings nutzen | Deutsche Postdeutschepost.de
5. 5Deutsche Post Adresswikidata.org
6. 6Deutsche Post Adressde.wikipedia.org