Personalised stamp

Stamps produced by Zazzle.com for the United States, for instance, are one-piece, self-adhesive with die cut margins to emulate perforations, and visually very similar to normal United States postage stamps, except for the addition of an information-based indicia (IBI) encoded by little black and white squares along one edge.

Examples given by postal authorities who offer this service usually depict family members, pets or other uncontroversial[1] subjects but users quickly realised that they could place almost any image in its space.

For instance, there have been attempts to publicise missing persons,[2] promote political causes such as Tamil independence, or to place the image of criminals or other controversial individuals on its stamps.

[6] The guidelines allow the stamps to show portraits of one or more people, writing or signatures, logos, symbols, and slogans, and advertisements of products and services.

While consumers may find that customized postage is available in a number of retail and online outlets, the USPS has authorized different companies to handle selected aspects of the program.

Pitney Bowes,[10] Stamps.com,[11] Zazzle.com and Fuji offer USPS-approved personalised postage via Stamp Expressions,[12] PhotoStamps[13] and ZazzleStamps and Yourstamps.com respectively.

Although most postal regulations permit the exclusion of "objectionable" pictures on the stamps, in 2004 The Smoking Gun managed to create personalised stamps featuring the Rosenbergs, Jimmy Hoffa, Ted Kaczynski, Monica Lewinsky's dress, Slobodan Milošević and Nicolae Ceauşescu using the service offered by stamps.com.

REACT Consulting cited stamps created for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) which it said were also partisan and political but which had been accepted for production.