In short: the objective of Postcrossing is to allow people to exchange postcards via mail (real mail, not email) with random postcrossers from around the world. Oh, and it's absolutely free, meaning, if you send a postcard, you'll receive one back from another random user (and sometimes, another one from the person you wrote to).

It goes like this:

1. You register yourself on the website. You will need to provide your postal address, so that you can receive postcards.
2. You request an address. This address will be accompanied by an ID (a unique code that identifies your postcard).
3. Choose a postcard, write something nice on it along with the assigned ID and mail it to the address you were previously given.
4. Wait wait wait. :)
5. Hoorray! The card arrives to its destination and is registered by the user! Now you too will receive a postcard!

For more details, please check the About section - If you still have questions, give us a shout!

 

Absolutely free! Please note that you won't receive any postcards if you don't send any - that's what makes the system work. The more postcards you send, the more you'll receive. It's simple, but you still have to send postcards to make it work.

Postcrossing ambassadors are members who have done remarkable contributions to the project, such as:

• Writing an article about Postcrossing for a newspaper or magazine
• Teaching a class about Postcrossing and inviting the students to join
• Spreading posters on your neighbourhood

The idea is to spread the word about Postcrossing, so use your imagination!

 

If you have done any of these (or other) good deeds, let us know and we will update your profile!

Tip: Put your mouse over the words "Postcrossing Ambassador" on the user's profile to learn about his/her contribution! 

Not anytime soon. Please note that in order for the complete system to work, there are a few requirements, a common language being one of them, and in this case, English.

If the website is translated, a user can register without understanding a single word of English and will not be able to receive or send postcards to several users, which goes against the objective of this project. Hence, for the moment, knowing English is a requirement.

No, It's Paulo! For some reason a lot of people call him 'Paolo' but that's Italian, and he's Portuguese :)

It depends. If it's a picture postcard of your city, you can write about your place. You can talk about yourself, talk about something funny or just say hi! It's really up to you to decide, there are no constraints about that. Nonetheless, here are some tips for you to write about:

• your place
• yourself
• your personal homepage/weblog
• your country
• questions about the person/place/country you are writing to
• how to contact you back

Always remember to clearly write the provided Postcard ID. Only then will it be possible for the other person to register your postcard on the website once they receive it.

Well, no. The main idea is postcards, so you have to send at least that. If you are more into letters or just find a postcard too short, send a letter too. If you are into Bookcrossing, you can also send a book if you want to. What you send with the postcard is up to you. No constraints are made about that, but try to use common sense on that one.

Probably the safest option would be English. When you receive the address to send the postcard to, you will also receive a list of languages that the recipient understands. Try to stick to those.

The number of postcards you can send (ie., have simultaneously traveling) to other users depends on the number of postcards you have already sent. This encourages new users to test the system, while allowing more experienced users to send more postcards.

The limits for the number postcards you can send are:

• If you have sent between 0 and 19 postcards, you can send 5 postcards.
• If you have sent between 20 and 39 postcards, you can send 6 postcards.
• If you have sent between 40 and 59 postcards, you can send 7 postcards.
• If you have sent between 60 and 79 postcards, you can send 8 postcards.
• If you have sent between 80 and 99 postcards, you can send 9 postcards.
• If you have sent between 100 and 149 postcards, you can send 10 postcards.
• If you have sent between 150 and 199 postcards, you can send 11 postcards.
• If you have sent between 200 and 249 postcards, you can send 12 postcards.
• ... and so on, in increments of 1 postcard for each 50 you send.

This means that, for instance, if you have sent 21 postcards, you can have at most 6 postcards traveling simultaneously to other users.

To be able to request more, some of the postcards you've sent should have either been received or timed out in transit (expired). Postcards expire after travelling 60 days, although they can still be registered after that.

Note: the alteration in the number of postcards that a user can send is a recent feature that is currently being tested. Adjustments to these limits may occur in the future. Link to this answer

Not for the moment. For now, the user to whom you will need to send your next postcard to is chosen randomly from another country (including your own, if you decide to allow that option).

Yes, absolutely!

If your life got busy at the time that you requested the postcards, but you would still like to send them later, that's ok - just make sure you send them within a year of the date you requested. They will be registered as normal postcards. 

There isn't a yes or no answer for this one. It's really up to you. If you wish to be contacted back, it might be a good idea to write your address on the postcard.

Users frequently ask why can't the senders address be sent automatically to the person who registers the postcard when he/she enters the postcard ID. The reason is that some people are not comfortable with this. If they choose not to send their address on the postcard, we won't do any different.

Note that when you register a postcard you can leave a message. The recipient can use this feature to request the sender's address if he or she would like to send a card back and the sender didn't include it on the postcard.

Don't panic! 

If for some reason the email with an address didn't arrive in your inbox, or you loose it, simply go to your Sent postcards and click the ID of that postcard: the address will be shown to you once again. 

Unfortunately, some email servers consider Postcrossing to be a spammer and thus discard the emails. This is beyond our control but several things can be done to overcome this situation. Please try this:

1. check your email account Junk/Spam folder;
2. change your email address in the profile to another one in a different provider (gmail.com is known to work);
3. make sure that the domain @postcrossing.com is in your list of safe senders;
4. in the very odd case that all the above options failed, please contact the webmaster for help.

Travelling postcards will timeout after 60 days. This should be enough transit time to allow a postcard to be sent and be registered by the recipient after having been received.

In addition, if one of your postcards expires, you can request a new address. Remember that you can have five non-expired postcards travelling at any time.

Wait :-) There are several things that can make a postcard take a long time to be registered. Here are a few:

• slow postal services;
• the user is on holidays;
• the user does not have a home internet connection;
• user didn't understand your handwriting and is trying to figure out the ID by contacting us;

And no, there isn't anything we can do to help you on that. Please be patient, experienced postcrossers will quickly advise you to do the same - it works! :-).

Please notice that if you try to register a postcard with a wrong ID, nothing will happen: feel free to try several combinations, it will only accept the correct one. For instance, it's quite common to confuse 1's with 7's and 8's with 9's.

If everything else fails, you can use the following form in order to request help on finding the correct ID. Please add as much information as you can gather from the received postcard, that will help us identify the sender.

Don't worry, we value your privacy (and ours too!). The map on your profile shows the city you live in, not your home address. All the users in the same city will be mapped to the same coordinates, which usually point to the city center. 

• Your address will only be used for the purpose of postcard exchange. For that purpose, it will only be made accessible to those users which must send you a postcard. No one else will have access to it from the Postcrossing system.
• Addresses will not be given, sold, traded or have any other use other than for the Postcrossing functionality described above.
• A user can request no more than a small number of addresses at a time from the website. This is so that no one can get all the addresses from the system. Other safety measures have also been implemented to prevent this problem.

You should, however, understand that this website is free and will not be held responsible for anything that may occur as a result of its use or misuse. The system is very safe to use and designed to be secure, but if you run into problems as a result of using the service, we might not be able to help you.

If you have any questions regarding this subject, feel free to contact us.

Simply update the address in your profile, including your map location. Please note that you can only change your country every 60 days. 

In a previous version of Postcrossing, if a user failed to login periodically, their account would be removed, and the user deleted. 

If that was the case with your account, to join Postcrossing again, you will have to re-register with a new username and a different email. There is no way we can recover your account.

The good news is, your new account will not be deleted anymore if you don't login for a long period. Since 2007, Postcrossing no longer deletes accounts automatically. Instead, we will simply mark you as inactive until you login again.

Having a valid Email address is important to participate in Postcrossing. It allows you to emails from us as well the private messages sent by other memebers to you.

 

For this reason, you might be requested by us to confirm your email address. For such we email you an activate link to your email address so that you can confirm it.

 

If you don't receive that or any other email from Postcrossing, here's a checklist of things to verify:

• check your email account Junk/Spam folder;
• if your account has a space limit, make sure it's not full;
• make sure that the domain @postcrossing.com is in your list of safe senders; in particular, add postcrossing@postcrossing.com as a valid sender.
• consider changing your email address in your profile to another one in a different provider (gmail.com is known to work);
• in the very odd case that all the above options failed, please contact us for help.

A postcard ID is a little code that uniquely identifies a postcard in the system. It is composed of two parts: two letters (the country code) and a number. The postcard ID is used by the recipient to register the received postcard in Postcrossing. 

For each address you request to send a postcard to, a postcard ID will be given to you. This means only official cards have postcards IDs (postcards that you have privately swapped with other users cannot be registered).

The algorithm behind Postcrossing is complex and while in some cases it might seem unbalanced, in the long run it does to make everybody to be closely balanced.

We're really sorry to hear that! If you're sure that you want to remove your account, please login with your username and password and go here (there's no turning back).

If you would just like to take a break from Postcrossing, that's ok. Just edit your profile, and select the option 'Inactive'. When you're ready to come back, just edit it again, and voilá! 

 

Actually, we don't. The field is totaly optional and the users are free not to enter that information. Currently we use it to estimate the average members age. Also, we like to email our users on their special day and share with them who else celebrates their birthday on that date.

No. However, you may say what your preferences are in your profile. That only means that the person might try to fulfil them - It does not necessarily guarantee that they can or will.

You must still register all postcards you receive - irrespective of whether they match your preferences or not.

No. Please choose your username carefully - You will not be able to change it later.

You can ask anyone in the forum (this is typically faster) or use the contact form to reach us.