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 is absolutely free, meaning, if you send a postcard, you will 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 to send a postcard. An address is displayed along with the member's profile. This address will be accompanied by a Postcard ID - a unique code that identifies your postcard.
3. Choose a postcard, write something nice on it along with the assigned Postcard ID, and mail it to the address you were 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!

The Postcrossing website is absolutely free! Please note that you will not receive any postcards if you do not send any - that is what makes the system work. The more postcards you send, the more you will receive. It is simple, but you still have to send postcards to make it work.

Note however, that you will need to spend money on postage to send the postcards and to buy postcards if you do not have any.

Don't worry, the receiver can still ask for help when they receive your postcard.

If you would like to make the receiver's life a little easier, just write them a private message to explain that they will be receiving a postcard without a Postcard ID. Include the Postcard ID in the message.

A Postcrossing Ambassador is a member who has made remarkable contributions to the project. Members have received this title by doing things like:

• Writing an article about Postcrossing for a newspaper or magazine;
• Teaching a class about Postcrossing and inviting the students to join;
• Spreading posters in their neighbourhood.

The idea is to spread the word about Postcrossing, so if you want to become an Ambassador use your imagination!

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

We receive many requests of ambassador badges for writing about Postcrossing in blogs or homepages. Currently we are not considering these eligible unless proof is provided of having a very large audience.

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

Not any time soon. For the project to work, there needs to be a common language; in this case we chose English.

If the website is translated to other languages, a user can register without understanding a single word of English. This member would only be able to send postcards to other members who share a common language. This goes against the objective of the Postcrossing project. Hence, for the moment, it is a requirement to be able to read and write basic English.

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

It depends. If the postcard has a picture of your city, you may want to write something about the city. You can also talk about yourself, talk about something funny, or just say hi! It is really up to you to decide what you would like to write; there are no constraints but please be conscious that you may be writing to a child. If you are stuck, here are some ideas about what to write:

• your place of residence
• yourself
• your personal homepage or weblog
• your country
• questions about the person or place or country you are writing to
• information about how the other member can contact you

Always remember to clearly write the Postcard ID that is provided to you. The Postcard ID is the only way the receiver can register your postcard on the website.

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.

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).

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.

Initially you can send 5 postcards. As you exchange more postcards with other members of the site, the number of postcards that you can send (that is, have simultaneously traveling) will increase. This system encourages new users to try out the project while allowing more avid members to send more postcards.

For every 20 postcards that you send and have been registered, the number of postcards that you can send will increment by 1. When you reach 100 postcards registered, you will be allowed 1 extra postcard for every 50 postcards sent and registered.

For example:

• 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 if you have sent 21 postcards, you can have at most 6 postcards traveling simultaneously to other members.

Once you have reached your limit, the only way to free up a slot to send another postcard is to either have a postcard you have sent be registered or have a postcard you have sent time out (expire) in transit. Postcards expire after traveling 60 days although they can still be (and often are) registered after that time frame.

Note: Adjustments to these limits may occur in the future.

Not at the moment. For now, addresses are chosen randomly from another country (including your own, if you choose that option).

Yes, absolutely!

If your life got busy at the time that you requested an address to send a postcard and were unable to do so, you can still send the postcard late. Just make sure that you send the postcard within a year of the date you requested the address. Also make sure that the member whose address you were given is still an active member of Postcrossing. Once the member gets the postcard and registers it, the postcard will be registered as a normal postcard.

Not all countries require the name of the recipient on the address. The postcard will still arrive at its destination. Please trust the member - he or she knows their address best.

It is really up to you. If you wish to be contacted back, it might be a good idea to write your address on the postcard. However, not all postcrossers will write you back.

Members frequently ask why their address is not sent automatically to the person who registers the received postcard. The reason is that some members are not comfortable with this. It is their choice if they would like to send an address on the postcard; we will not do any different.

Note that when you register a postcard, you can leave a message. At this point, you can request the address of the member that sent you a postcard if you would like to send a return postcard.

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 member is on holiday
• the member does not have a home internet connection
• the member did not understand your handwriting and is trying to figure out the ID by contacting us

We advise you to contact the recipient of your postcard through private message and ask whether the postcard has arrived (the ID might be blurred, illegible, etc.).

Please be patient, experienced Postcrossers will quickly advise you to do the same - it works!

Do not panic!

If for some reason the email with an address did not arrive in your inbox, or you lose it, go to your Sent postcards and click the ID of that postcard. The address will be shown to you once again.

Some email servers wrongly consider Postcrossing to be a spammer and thus discard the emails. This is beyond our control but there are several things you can do to overcome this situation:

1. check your email account Junk/Spam folder
2. make sure your email account has enough free space
3. make sure that the domain @postcrossing.com is in your list of safe senders
4. change your email address in your profile to another account with a different provider (Gmail is known to work and accounts are free)
5. check your anti-spam filter -- if you are using an anti-spam filter that requires senders to manually confirm that they want to send you a message (for instance, by clicking a link), you might want to disable that for emails sent from the domain postcrossing.com.
6. in the unlikely event that all the above options fail, please contact the webmaster for help.

Probably because that country has many more active users (sending many more postcards) than other countries.

For a more balanced distribution of members and postcard origins, try inviting some international friends to the project. In this manner more balance can be achieved without being unfair to countries where Postcrossing is popular.

Generally, 60 days is enough time for a member to send a postcard and it be registered by the recipient after reaching its destination.

If your postcard is not registered after 60 days of traveling, it is set to expired in our system. But do not worry; the postcard can still be registered by the receiver withn a year of the date it was sent. Every time one of your postcards expires, you can request a new address.

If the Postcard ID is wrong, try several combinations. The Postcrossing system will only accept the correct Postcard ID, so feel free to try several! Since it is quite common to confuse 1's with 7's and 8's with 9's, try substituting each when you are having trouble reading the ID.

If everything else fails, you can use the following form to request help with finding the correct Postcard ID. Please add as much information as you can gather from the received postcard. This information will help us identify the member who sent the postcard.

Do not 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.

Yes! Please be aware of the following:

• Your address will only be used for the purposes of postcard exchange. Your address will only be made accessible to those members which have been selected to send you a postcard. No one else will have access to your address 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.

It is quite simple! The first step is to get the postcard into an image file. For that you must have access to a computer scanner or a use a digital photo camera. Once you have the postcard in an image file, follow these steps:

1. If you are not logged in to Postcrossing, log in.
2. Go to your Received postcards section
3. Find the row that has the postcrossing ID for the image you would like to upload. Click on the green '+' icon found in the last column of the row.
4. Click the browse button and find and select your file. You can also enter an optional description about the postcard.
5. Click Upload and that is it!

No, not anymore. The Postcrossing Flickr group was the initial place for Postcrossing users to upload and share their postcards. Now that Postcrossing supports the upload of postcard images directly to Postcrossing, we do not use the group anymore to display postcards on Postcrossing. To display your postcards on Postcrossing, follow the directions at the How do I upload a postcard image? FAQ.

Currently, the senders can upload postcards images while the postcard is still traveling. Once the postcard is registered, this responsibility transfers to the receiver since he is the one who has the physical postcard.

Moreover, we only allow the front (the part that does not have writing or your address) of the postcard to be uploaded. Please do not upload images of the backside of the postcards you receive.

You can delete any postcards that you received and uploaded to your wall. To delete it, go to the Received Postcards section and click on the ID of the postcard you wish to delete. Right above the postcard image there is a button to delete that postcard.

If you find a postcard image that should be removed, the first thing to do is to contact that person and ask to remove it. Please wait a few days for a reply since not every user accesses the site on a daily basis. If you don't obtain a reply, please contact us specifying the reason why that image should be removed from the site. We will do our best to help.

If you have a twitter.com account, you can integrate it with Postcrossing. When you send or receive a postcard, Postcrossing will automatically publish that to your twitter.

Here are some samples:

• Writing a #postcrossing postcard to Brazil
• Received a #postcrossing postcard from Russia - http://tinyurl.com/6huxtl
• Received my first postcard from www.postcrossing.com - http://tinyurl.com/67xpej

To activate this, you just need to edit your account and enter your twitter username and password - don't forget to check the "Publish to my twitter account" option. You can at any moment disable this functionality.

If you don't have a twitter account and want to learn more about this service, visit twitter.com website.

If you have a Facebook account, you can integrate it with Postcrossing so that some events are automatically published to your wall. If you connect the two accounts, Postcrossing will publish short stories to your Facebook feed when you send or receive a postcard in the Postcrossing website.

To activate this, just follow these steps:

First you need to go to your Edit Account page and click on the blue Facebook connect button. You will be asked to login with your Facebook account (if aren't logged in yet) and you will need to accept to connect your Facebook account with Postcrossing. You need to do this step only once. See screenshoot.

If you do not logout from your Facebook account, then when you send or register a postcard a window will appear asking you to confirm if you wish to publish that event to your Facebook wall. Note that this window appears only when page is fully loaded (after requesting an address or after registering a postcard). On this window you also have the option to allow Postcrossing to do this automatically for you so that you do not need to approve (this window) every time. See screenshoot.

We are currently testing and improving this integration so if you find any problems or have any suggestions, please let us know.

The connection between Postcrossing and Facebook must be disabled on your Facebook privacy settings. The location of this settings might depend on your Facebook setup, but generally these are the steps to reach it:

• Login in Facebook
• On the 'Settings' menu, go to 'Application settings'
• In the 'Show' dropdown, select 'Authorized'
• Scroll down to the 'External websites'
• In the Postcrossing item, click the 'X' to cancel the integration

In a previous version of Postcrossing, if a member failed to log in periodically, their account was removed and the member profile deleted.

If this happened to your account, to join Postcrossing again, you will have to re-register with a new username and a different email address. There is no way to recover your account.

The good news is that, under the new version of Postcrossing, your new account will not be deleted if you do not login for a long period. Since 2007, Postcrossing no longer deletes accounts automatically. Instead, we will simply mark the account as inactive until you log in again.

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

For this reason, you may be requested by us to confirm your email address. This confirmation is sent through email with an activation link.

If you do not receive the activation email or any other email from Postcrossing, here is a checklist of items to verify:

• check your email account Junk/Spam folder
• make sure your email account has enough free space
• make sure that the domain @postcrossing.com is in your list of safe senders
• change your email address in your profile to another account with a different provider (Gmail is known to work and accounts are free)
• check your anti-spam filter -- if you are using an anti-spam filter that requires senders to manually confirm that they want to send you a message (for instance, by clicking a link), you might want to disable that for emails sent from the domain postcrossing.com.
• in the unlikely event that all the above options fail, please contact the webmaster for help

Many Postcrossing users exchange postcards between them besides exchanging the official Postcrossing ones. We call them direct swaps. They are exchanges organized by the Postcrossing users themselves and are not tracked by the system and hence not have Postcard IDs.

To help users know if another member is available for private swaps or not, we allow users to configure that on their account. This way, users who are interested in doing direct swaps are easier to find and users who do not wish to participate can clearly state that too.

Currently the best way to donate to Postcrossing is through PayPal.com. The PayPal.com service is free and safe to use. Signing up with Paypal is free and quick. You don't even need a credit card if you are in one of these countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Sweden, and Switzerland.

If you can't open a Paypal account, there are two other alternatives: International bank transfer or sending a check by mail. Please keep in mind that an International bank transfer may have associated fees depending on the bank. If you wish to use one of these alternatives, please contact us for the required details.

Some countries in Postcrossing are not actual countries: they may be dependent territories or regions of special interest, which enjoy a certain degree of autonomy, as detailed on the ISO 3166 norm. Taiwan, Macau, Hong Kong, Wallis and Futuna, the Cayman Islands, the Christmas Island etc. all fall into this category.

The algorithm behind Postcrossing is complex and while in some cases it might seem unbalanced, in the long run, it does maintain a close balance..

We are really sorry to hear that! If you are sure that you want to remove your account, please log in with your username and password and go to the removal page (it's not possible to revert this).

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

Actually, we don't. The field is totally optional and you are free to leave that information out. Currently we use it to estimate the average member's age. Also, we like to email our members on their special day and share with them who else celebrates their birth day.

No. However, you may say what your preferences are in your profile. What you write will indicate to other members what type of postcards you like to receive; however, it does not necessarily guarantee that they can or will fulfil your preferences.

You must still register all postcards you receive regardless of whether they match your preferences or not. Therefore, stating in your profile that you will not register X or Y type of postcards is against the rules.

Remember that Postcrossing is not a collector's website - it is a postcard exchange website.

We cannot, but you can! It is impossible for us to translate the about page into every possible language. But our members can help by translating into their own language. Just translate the text in the about page and send it to us. It helps if you keep the text in the same format, that is, with all the paragraphs and titles that the text has so that it is easier for us to add it to the page. When it is ready, just email it to webmaster@postcrossing.com and we will make sure it appears on the page with a reference to you.

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