Asklemmy

There's plenty of these left over things.

Lots of official documents are issued electronically now, with no physical version.

Before with physical documents, if you wanted to provide a copy a bank would ask for it to be "certified as a true copy of the original". That's fine and sensible.

Then banks started asking for electronic copies of physical documents.... but still wanted the document that was scanned to say that it was a true copy of the original. The obvious problem being that once you have an electronic copy you could just print the "certification" part on to whatever document you like. Whatever though, that's what they ask for so sure.

More recently the final evolution of this shit show... a certified copy of an electronic document. So a client emails me a pdf, I print it, write on it that it's a true copy of the pdf that was emailed to me, scan that and email it back. Note that I'm not making any comments about the content of the document. Merely that it's a copy of some other document.

Where im at they generally want a utility bill and you can print out or show an image of it on a phone/tablet.

Seems fairly outdated to me, but also completely inadequate. I've lived in my current spot for almost 3 years now, and I still routinely receive bills sent to a prior resident. Not even the most recent prior resident either, but someone who hadn't lived here in a decade or more, and somehow the utility company doesn't know that he's not gonna pay that bill they're sending him, even when I'm paying the same damn company for utilities at the same address.

You can totally use your lease.

I get a reasonable amount of mail. Like a few pieces/week. You could also use a lease/print out the utility bills in your name.

For proof or residence, it's usually bill for a utility with your name and address on it. That is to say, you can't show up with a birthday card sent to your address because anyone can send a birthday card with your name on it to any address, but the cable company, electric company, etc isn't going to send a bill to your address with your name on it unless you're on the hook paying that bill.

Is it outdated? Maybe a little. I think paper bills are still pretty normal, even if they're paid online, but increasingly less so.

Never heard of this kind of address verification being a thing before, but definitely sounds like a hassle. I have actually received mail recently from my bank, but before that the last piece of mail I got was probably.. 3 years ago? Ish

What state? You should probably be able to use a utility bill for that purpose, even if it's a digital bill.