Keep Your Home Address Private: Legal Address for Creators

Being visible online makes you findable — and that includes your front door. If you run a blog, self-publish books on Amazon, or build a community as a creator, many countries require you to publish full contact details, including a physical address. In Germany and Austria this is the famous "Impressum" (imprint) requirement, and it applies to most websites that earn any money at all. The good news: you can meet the legal requirement without printing your home address on the internet. A digital mailbox gives you a real, serviceable street address that you can put in your imprint today.

Why is publishing your home address a problem?

Once your home address appears in your website's legal notice, it is public: visible to every reader, every crawler, and every data broker that scrapes imprint pages automatically. There is no practical way to take it back.

Authors and creators know the consequences first-hand:

• Junk mail and spam from address dealers and shady marketing firms
• Uninvited visitors — from unhappy customers to, in the worst case, stalkers at your door
• Doxxing: your private details get weaponized in forums and social networks

Simply leaving the imprint out is not an option. Under German law (Section 5 of the Digital Services Act, DDG), a missing or incomplete imprint regularly triggers costly cease-and-desist letters. Austria has equivalent rules in its E-Commerce Act and Media Act, and if you publish for a German-speaking audience, these rules can apply to you even if you live elsewhere.

Is a PO box enough for the imprint?

No. The imprint requires a serviceable address, and a PO box is not one. A serviceable address is an address where official and court documents can be formally delivered to you — which means a person must be reachable there to accept them. A PO box cannot do that, and neither can an invented address.

Creators who list a PO box anyway risk exactly what they were trying to avoid: legal warnings and expensive disputes. Privacy has to be solved differently.

How does a digital mailbox work as your imprint address?

A digital mailbox combines a real, serviceable street address with digital mail handling. You don't rent office space; you use a location where trained staff receive your mail in person. That combination is what makes the address valid for an imprint.

Here is how it works at Clevver:

• Real locations, not letterbox companies: choose an address in Berlin, London, Vienna, the USA, and other cities. Staff at each location personally accept your mail.
• Your mail goes digital: when a letter arrives, you get a notification in the app. For each item you decide whether it gets scanned, forwarded, stored, or securely destroyed.
• Ready for your imprint immediately: put the address of your digital mailbox straight into your legal notice — and your home address disappears from the web.

For a closer look at scanning, forwarding, and how digital mail delivery works day to day, see our guide to a German postal address online. And if your project grows into a registered business later, the virtual office adds trade-register-ready credentials on top.

Three steps to your own address

Traditional business-address providers work with review processes, paperwork, and setup fees that stretch over days. Clevver's onboarding is fully automated:

1. Pick a location: choose the address that fits your project — Berlin, London, Vienna, or the USA.
2. Pick a plan: transparent pricing, no hidden fees, no long lock-in.
3. Verify online and start: identity verification runs entirely online in software. After about 5 minutes, your address is active.

You can update your imprint the same day. Register now and your front door stays what it should be: private.

FAQ

Is a rented address legal for a website imprint? Yes, as long as it is serviceable — a real street address where deliveries are accepted in person. That is exactly what Clevver locations provide. A plain PO box does not meet the requirement.

Does the imprint rule apply to small blogs and side projects? As soon as a website is run commercially, the German imprint duty applies — and the bar is low: affiliate links or ad banners are usually enough. Purely private pages without any income are the exception, not the rule.

I self-publish on Amazon. Do I need an address too? Yes. Books published in Germany fall under press-law publisher identification in addition to the website imprint duty. You can use your Clevver address here as well instead of printing your home address in the book.

What happens to mail sent to my new address? You get an app and email notification the day it arrives, then decide per item: scan, forward, store, or destroy. Requested scans are usually available as PDFs the same or next business day.

How fast is the address ready to use? Immediately after online verification — the whole setup takes about 5 minutes. Still have questions? → Contact us