Dear John: Would you believe the post office has no safeguards in place for change-of-address requests?

My postmaster in New York said anyone making a request — even a criminal forwarding someone’s mail through an address-change request form — cannot be stopped or investigated until the person affected comes in and signs a complaint.

Is that amazing or not? Do you have any insights on this? K.L.

Dear K.L.: The post office sees things differently.

“The USPS customers must show ID to change their address and applying for other services at post offices,” said a spokesman. It accepts certain US state or federal government IDs; US or foreign passports, Matricula Consular (Mexico), or NEXUS (Canada).

“Customers are encouraged to monitor the receipt of their mail by subscribing to Informed Delivery, a free and optional notification feature that gives residential consumers the ability to digitally preview their letter-sized mail and manage their packages scheduled to arrive soon,” the post office said.

You can also visit informeddelivery.usps.com to check if your address is eligible and sign up for the feature.

And any suspicious activity or non-receipt of mail over a couple days should be reported to the local post office or by calling (800) 344-7779.