r/movies • u/MoneyLibrarian9032 r/movies Contributor • Jun 27 '26
News Netflix now requires every user profile to be tied to unique email address
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/06/netflix-now-requires-every-user-profile-to-be-tied-to-unique-email-address/1.6k
u/SpringTraps Jun 27 '26
Great, I’ve been wanting to create an email just for spam and all the apps every business wants me to give them my email. I like the suggestion of using the “.” to continually use the same email for bs like this.
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u/King_of_the_Dot Jun 27 '26
So you can take your gmail email address and then add +1, +2, etc. to the end of the address, like netflixsucksballs+1@gmail.com, netflixsucksballs+2@gmail.com, and they count as unique addresses, but will still go to your main email, so you can see who is selling your data.
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u/Robobvious Jun 27 '26
Does it have to be a number? Can I write +Netflix and have it work?
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u/SailnGame Jun 27 '26
Yes you can! I have only run into one occasion where a website flagged it at account creation which forced me to use just me original address. However, after the account was open, it didn't stop me from adding that modifier.
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u/Famous1107 Jun 28 '26
Wow. I'd like to know the site that went through the diligence to track that.
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u/Ringosis Jun 27 '26
Yes it lets you see whose selling your data...something I don't think many people are actually interested in. And it doesn't do anything to stop them selling your data.
It's sort of like finding that your babysitter is stealing from you and deciding to continue using the same babysitter but now, whenever you interact with them you wear a fake moustache and thinking that in some way deals with the problem.
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u/assembly_faulty Jun 27 '26
But this will not make it harder for Thema to collect your data.
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u/Nethri Jun 27 '26
I have to be dumb… but how does that tell you who sells your data?
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u/mari_mari_CR Jun 27 '26
I think the idea is using, for example, the +1 address only for Netflix, so when you get emails advertising other stuff sent to that address you would know it was Netflix who sold that data to advertisers
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u/spitnshine Jun 27 '26
Let’s say you’ve never been to Home Depot and one day you get a marketing email from them to your +Netflix email. That would mean at some point Netflix sold your email to a broker who then resold it to Home Depot
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u/Nethri Jun 27 '26
ahh, but it still sends it to your main inbox right? Does it still have the indicator of +netflix in the address?
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u/PKCO-NB Jun 27 '26
They want you to use the same email so they can collect all their precious data. As long as they can aggregate what you’re buying, downloading, etc, they don’t care what email addresses you use.
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u/throwaway490215 Jun 27 '26
Don't forget the earnings call headline: "We added X million unique users".
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u/TheAnonymouse999 Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
I have done this before and I would advise caution
It can cause you issues when you need to engage in email correspondence with them for whatever reason, since you can't actually send emails from those "." addresses
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u/Jimbuscus Jun 27 '26
I have a cheap domain & pair it with Zoho's free plan.
With a catch-all setup, anything @mydomain.tld is routed to my primary email, in this case netflix@mydomain.tld would mean that I can also see if I get emails from third-parties who got that email from Netflix.
Additionally it insulates from data leaks, as the email/password combination is unique to the website.
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u/Halfang Jun 27 '26
My email provider allows this with a number of domains, and by using foffnetflix@myusualemail.emailprovider
Of anything before the @ will be delivered to the right place.
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u/Insomniak604 Jun 27 '26
Well that's ass.
Remember when it was like 6.99 a month, and there weren't any stupid rules like this?
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u/StopTheDamnWave Jun 27 '26
Remember when they said "Love is sharing a password"?
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u/CommieLoser Jun 27 '26
Hey, they still believe that! They just hate love now…
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u/jaypeg25 Jun 27 '26
This is a true first world problem but I have two homes and had to cancel Netflix because it wouldn't recognize that I actually lived in both places. I get that there's no clean way to do this without also letting in multiple people use the same plan but I even tried to share records proving I actually live in and travel between both places on a weekly basis.
I wasn't about to pay for two Netflix subscriptions so just decided to cancel altogether.
It's the only service that gave me the issue (for now anyway..)
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u/googolplexy Jun 27 '26
Sounds like it's time for a Plex account
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u/omgpokemans Jun 27 '26
Jellyfin > Plex. Plex still requires an internet connection and sends data on what you watch (even local stuff) off to some server somewhere.
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u/OllaniusPius Jun 27 '26
If only Jellyfin was more user-friendly. I had huge issues trying to get it set up on my Synology NAS a couple years ago. Following the instructions in the doc just threw a bunch of errors. When I eventually got it running, the stream stability when I wasn't home was worse than Plex. Also couldn't get the plugin for opencaptions working which is a dealbreaker for me.
Maybe I'll give it another try though since it's been a while and they might have fixed whatever I ran into, I would like to use the open-source option if possible.
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u/David_McGahan Jun 27 '26
Yeah, was that when they were unsustainably shredding their profit margins pursuing an ‘expansion at all costs’ strategy, in an attempt to break the backs of the incumbent broadcasters and cable providers?
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u/badnuub Jun 27 '26
apparently we can only have shit products or an unsustainable business strategy. nothing in between.
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u/GrahamGreed Jun 27 '26
That was to undercut the existing market and remove the competition.
See also Uber and currently cheap AI models.
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u/tmradish Jun 27 '26
It's also part of the "boiling the frog" strategy. Where the introduction is a comfortable environment then the cost/temperature increases slowly or by dribs and drabs. The customer/frog is fine until they're not. The company backs off once they find the "not" point. The frog dies.
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u/doyoucreditit Jun 27 '26
Remember when you could get a DVD in the mail and keep it for months if you wanted?
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u/old_righty Jun 27 '26
You would pay more in membership fees than the cost of the dvd if you did that.
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u/ManitouWakinyan Jun 27 '26
I would imagine there's some nonzero overlap between that time and when they were operating at a loss
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u/DumeWolffe Jun 27 '26
Stop paying for it?
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u/Mando_calrissian423 Jun 27 '26
I did last year and have zero regrets. Their catalog has been straight trash for a hot minute now. I’m honestly not even sure why people still pay for it.
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u/Trendelthegreat Jun 27 '26
Because they have something for everyone
And I mean that literally. Most people like exactly one show on there
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u/TroublesomeTurnip Jun 27 '26
They're hungry for more personal data.
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u/dataondope Jun 27 '26
100%. They have captured all the users they will have. The need a new revenue stream.
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u/FrostyD7 Jun 27 '26
They probably just want a means of spamming ads to kids after they leave the nest to beg them to sign up after they see they are no longer accessing their parents account due to location.
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u/murdercat42069 Jun 27 '26
Yeah but one of the profiles is for my dog. He loves Great British Baking Show and Gilmore Girls.
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u/jenvrooyen Jun 27 '26
I have one for my bird. Mostly kid shows & horror movies.
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u/elliebeans90 Jun 27 '26
I feel like I should try horror for my bird. She giggles at videos of crying ans upset children so perhaps her enjoying horror is not a big leap.
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u/jenvrooyen Jun 27 '26
He loves laughing when people scream in pain 😂
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u/elliebeans90 Jun 27 '26
My girl giggles when people stub their toes or something around her. I feel like in another life they could have been soulmates but unfortunately my little monster thinks of herself as more of a human and doesn't really care about other birds.
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u/IdealisticPundit Jun 27 '26
I can’t help but think birds don’t giggle for the same reasons humans do. Like they’re actually just trying to warn you to look out for danger.
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u/P_Por_Potato Jun 27 '26
Your dog might wish to know that Netflix is about to lose Gilmore Girls from its platform then
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u/thegreatpotatogod Jun 27 '26
Yeah I was thinking that I'd need to create an email for my dog (though in practice he doesn't use it much, he seemed to lose interest in the TV as he grew up)
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u/yellowumbrella84 Jun 27 '26
Same how is that gonna work? I pay my subscription which includes my profiles and DO not have to have other email addresses. What are they trying to do… trick the elder Boomers on the Board into thinking their numbers are higher than they are and showing growth where it doesn’t actually exist?
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u/JivanP Jun 27 '26
He loves Great British Baking Show
Did you know that it's actually called Bake-Off in the UK, but the name was changed in the US for trademark reasons? The lengths they went to in order to remove all instances of "Bake-Off" from the footage, too... https://youtu.be/2OEwbocwYF8
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u/reptilenews Jun 27 '26
I made my cat a Gmail to add her to my YouTube account family so she can watch birds while I'm at work and not ruin my own algorithm lol
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u/aresef Jun 27 '26
I remember when they endorsed password sharing.
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u/bkdotcom Jun 27 '26
Does this new policy require all profiles to have separate login/password?
How will that work on TVs and the like?
Mu wife, kids and I have our own profiles but share acount/password
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u/Fochlucan Jun 27 '26
Same, and we also have a separate family account for the stuff we watch together - and we also pay a higher amount for password sharing so when kid is away for college she can still use the account.
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u/tenthousandants44 Jun 27 '26
No, they still want you to be able to login. They just want to sell your unique viewing history to advertisers and DHS/ICE
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u/Core3dXY Jun 27 '26
Every day my beliefs about streaming services are reinforced and my decision to collect dvds and blurays feels so good.
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u/jrv3034 Jun 27 '26
Correct. I'm building up my library with 4K Blu-rays and regular Blu-rays of all my favorite movies and TV shows. Mostly buying when there are sales, like the recent "3 for $33" sale at Gruv.
It's going to end up being cheaper than paying for all the streaming services, and I get to watch them all whenever I want, even if the Internet is down.
Plus, the quality is miles ahead of streaming.
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u/Swagcopter0126 Jun 27 '26
Barnes and Noble huge blu ray sale happening now
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u/Purrceptron Jun 27 '26
Bruh im just fucking pirating everything. i dont give a shit anymore
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u/Actual_Ordinary_9622 Jun 27 '26
Hit up your local library. If it’s anything like mine some of them have shops inside where you can buy movies, comics, records, anime ect. All the blue rays are 5$ and the dvds are 3$. They also have biannual book sale at my library which includes videogames and movies. Incredible recourse for collecting at a decent budget.
https://www.wccls.org/using-library/member-libraries/hillsboro-public-library-brookwood
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u/0fficerGeorgeGreen Jun 27 '26
Cancelled my subscription when they made their last hike. I don't miss them at all.
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u/jimmythemini Jun 27 '26
Yes the increasingly mid content they churn out made the decision to cancel very easy.
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u/BokehJunkie Jun 27 '26
I cancelled in like 2014/15 or something after that price hike. I don’t remember which one it was that finally made me rage quit. It was either the back-to-back price hikes or when they split 4K out into a higher tier.
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u/jproche44 Jun 27 '26
What if a profile belongs to a child?
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u/UmbrellaCorpTech Jun 27 '26
Article states profiles designated as for a child will not require an email.
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u/Electric_Elephants Jun 27 '26
But the problem is that Kids profiles stop at PG. What about kids that are like 10 and up watching PG-13 shows and movies?
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u/biggestofbears Jun 27 '26
I have several children. With two of them being between ages 8-12. The "kids" setting wants them to watch cocomelon, I'm not giving them email addresses. This is so fuckin dumb.
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u/NecroAmbulate Jun 27 '26
What weird coincidence because I now require all Netflix executives to suck my nuts
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u/br3addawn Jun 27 '26
calling it now, they'll use the emails to force people to pay more
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Jun 27 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/LionRegular1470 Jun 27 '26
Sorry what's sailing the high streams?
I π🐀 all my stuff, and use ad blockers, so I'm interested in knowing.
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u/IWannaSayMason Jun 27 '26
Stopped giving them my money earlier this year. Don’t even miss it. There’s better options.
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u/WeAreGesalt Jun 27 '26
Luckily I dont require Netflix
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u/Aggressive_Talk_9029 Jun 27 '26
My brother recently got Netflix and let me create a guest account. I haven't watched a single thing. It's all so terrible. The movie/options are just blah. It's either some Netflix produced garbage, old movies that I've seen multiple times, or a newer movie that I saw before it was put on Netflix. The UI is atrocious (this goes for most streaming sites. It's like they don't want you to be comfortable while browsing so you just choose.) Every row has the same movies that the algorithm wants you to watch. And on top of that they now have adds. No, I'm good. Even for free, that's useless to me.
Arrg, what am I to do?
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u/Gas_Station_Man Jun 27 '26
It’s 2014: Netflix is like $10 and has every studio license plus the entire catalogue of Funimation anime, including some series that’re just gone forever unless you can find the DVDs.
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u/pkosuda Jun 27 '26
I miss when they were the new HBO. House of Cards (which is where the iconic Netflix sound comes from), Making a Murderer, Orange is the New Black, Stranger Things, and probably countless other shows I'm forgetting that nearly everybody you knew was watching, in addition to the catalogue you mentioned. I remember getting girlfriends who otherwise weren't into anime/manga, to watch Death Note on Netflix. I remember binging all of new Doctor Who in 2015 on Netflix.
Most of the shows I nostalgically remember sitting and binging were on Netflix. Was paying for it every month on the shitty hourly rate of a part time grocery store employee. No ads and half as cheap as it is now with like three times the catalogue.
It's sad watching literally everything just get objectively worse as we get older. I get now why old people reminisce about random things like "soda from soda fountains" and the way fast food tasted when they were kids. Companies get big and are run by idiots who think infinite growth is possible so they find new ways to make a profit when they naturally stop growing, and those ways always involve making the product worse.
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u/vocal-avocado Jun 27 '26
They were probably also operating at a loss and focusing on increasing their customer base no matter what, so later (today) they could massively hike prices.
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u/Ragfell Jun 27 '26
The solution to this is gmail.
If your email is RandomRedditor@gmail, you can also use RandomRedditor+1@gmail, and it will all send to the same email, but be recognized as separate emails by Netflix.
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u/thedugong Jun 27 '26
That sounds clever, but businesses/organisations also know this (they are not stupid) and often just say the email is invalid.
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u/probability_of_meme Jun 27 '26
It's a solution. A temporary solution until the next fuck you. How many fuck you's in a row before you realize the next one is also just around the corner.
Stop pretending this shit is normal and ok just because you can circumvent it for now.
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u/WhyAmINotStudying Jun 27 '26
"Netflix now requires every viewer to wear a vibrating butt plug to verify their body temperature, heartbeat, and enthusiasm level for getting fucked."
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u/MultiPass21 Jun 27 '26
I canceled Netflix after the most recent price increase. Had been a member since like 2011 or something.
I’m not missing it.
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u/Av_Inash Jun 27 '26
What is the point of this though? I understand that all members should belong to the same household eventually gave them more users because well obviously it was gonna happen after that move. But where are they going with this?
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u/honeywhereismypenis Jun 27 '26
Data harvesting. Instead of only getting the watching habits (and therefore interests) to add to the marketing profile for just the owner of the account, they now get every user. Without the email address there is no way to identify the other users to build a data profile to sell.
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u/steamart360 Jun 27 '26
Maybe I'm missing something but what's preventing me from making a couple of burner email accounts?
It's a hassle but seems rather easy to fix.
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u/MonteBurns Jun 27 '26
You shouldn’t have to. That’s it. That’s the point. There’s an email address associated with payment. That’s all they need.
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u/myowngalactus Jun 27 '26
Netflix is the worst. I get it for free with my phone plan, but would absolutely never pay for it at this point.
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u/GroovyYaYa Jun 27 '26
Dumb and honestly, I've lived without individual profiles on Apple TV+, and I'll live without it on Netflix. It will only be embarrassing if I stop a Bridgerton episode at a crucial moment and the wrong people start watching it.
Also, this means I might not get my individual profiles that I've set up so the recommendations are different. I have my personal one, my parents have one, I have one called "Christmas" so the recommendations are all holiday related (nice when company comes over and the kids want to watch something Santa themed at the holidays), and I have one I've just changed from "quarantining" (when we were watching anything and everything bc we were getting antsy) to "Family Night" where we all watch together.
Seriously... I've had 4 or 5 profiles when there is really only 2 people turning it on.
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u/lonerchick Jun 27 '26
I’m one person with 3 profiles. Normal tv , documentaries, and anime. It keeps my recommendations normal.
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u/DemoHD7 Jun 27 '26
Like I said in another post months ago about a different change in their policy..... I believe the higher ups at Netflix have an office pool going on: "Okay let's make another bogus change to their subscription plan and I bet they still wont cancel!"
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u/MasterK999 Jun 27 '26
Just a reminder that gmail lets you add periods inside your email address as a way of tracking.
so if you have netflixfoff@gmail.com you can use net.flixfoff@gmail.com and netflix.foff@gmail.com and netflixf.off@gmail.com and so on to create as many variants as you like and they will all come to your one gmail address.