Guide
Serviceable address
Legal notice requirements for content creators and businesses
If you run a YouTube channel, a newsletter, an online shop or an Instagram profile with ads, German law requires a legal notice (Impressum). And that notice contains an address anyone can see. For many, this is the moment their home address ends up on the internet. Here is what a serviceable address is, why a PO box will not do, and what options you have to keep your private address to yourself.
Short answer
A serviceable address (German: ladungsfähige Anschrift) is an address where official documents, such as a lawsuit or a cease-and-desist letter, can be delivered to you. It needs a real street and house number; a PO box is not enough. But it does not have to be your home address: any address where you can be reached and where deliveries are accepted on your behalf will do. That is exactly what a receiving address with a power of attorney for receipt provides.
Who needs a legal notice at all
The legal notice requirement applies to anyone operating online in a business-like manner. That sounds like companies, but it covers much more: a channel with affiliate links, a blog with ad banners, a podcast with sponsors, a newsletter with paid subscriptions or a profile through which you handle brand deals usually falls under it. Purely private publishing with no intention of earning anything is exempt, but that line is crossed quickly. We do not provide legal advice. Which rules apply to you is best clarified with a lawyer, ideally one specialising in IT or media law.
If the legal notice is missing or incomplete, you risk a warning letter from competitors or a fine. So "I will just leave the address out" is not an option.
What the legal notice must contain
For individuals, the core is: your full name, a serviceable address, an email address and one more fast contact channel, such as a phone number. Registered companies add their legal form, authorised representatives, register court and register number, and the VAT ID where applicable. Content of a journalistic or editorial nature additionally requires a person responsible for the content, with an address.
The part that gets uncomfortable for creators is the address. Everything else is easy to publish.
What "serviceable" means
The term comes from procedural law. An address is serviceable if a bailiff or the postal service can formally deliver a document there: a lawsuit, a payment order, an injunction. That requires a place where someone accepts the document or where it can be legally deposited.
Three rules follow from this:
A PO box is not serviceable. Nobody accepts anything there, and formal service to PO boxes is not provided for.
A parcel locker is not serviceable, for the same reason.
An address where you can be reached and where someone accepts mail on your behalf is serviceable, even if you do not live there. What matters is that the delivery actually arrives there and reaches you.
Your options
Home address in the legal notice. The simplest solution and, for many, the reason not to start at all. Every follower, every troll and every address broker can find your front door. For people who are publicly visible, that is a real safety problem.
Your accountant's or lawyer's address. Works if the firm agrees and actually accepts mail for you. Usually expensive, often unwelcome, and it ties you to that firm.
Office service or coworking space. Serviceable if someone there accepts mail for you. In practice your mail is then bound to a place you rarely are, and forwarding is handled manually.
Receiving address with power of attorney for receipt. You instruct a service provider to accept deliveries on your behalf and file a written power of attorney for receipt. The provider's address thereby becomes your serviceable address. Mail is recorded, you are notified, and you decide whether it is scanned or forwarded.
What a serviceable address is not
It does not make you anonymous. Your name still appears in the legal notice, and anyone who wants to sue you can.
It is not a registered office. Whether and where you register a business or a company is a separate question with its own rules. The legal notice address only answers: where can you be reached?
It does not replace your tax address. The tax office wants your actual residential or business address, regardless of what the legal notice says.
And it only works if the provider takes its side seriously: deliveries must be recorded reliably and made available to you quickly. A lawsuit sitting unopened for four weeks is a problem, not privacy.
How it works at ProxyHub
From the Advanced plan you can activate your ProxyHub receiving address as a serviceable address. This is not an automatic part of the plan but an add-on with requirements: you verify your identity and sign a power of attorney for receipt, which you upload in the portal. After a brief completeness check, we activate the module for you. For companies, further details are required, such as register data or a trade licence. A registered company is not a prerequisite, though: the add-on is explicitly aimed at freelancers, self-employed people, authors and creators without a company as well.
After that, your legal notice shows your ProxyHub address in Fellbach. Whatever arrives there is handled like any other item: envelope scan, notification, you decide. So you see formal deliveries in the portal the same day, wherever you are.
In your legal notice it looks like this, for example:
ProxyHub
Höhenstraße 10
70736 Fellbach
Germany
Strengths and limits
- Your home address stays out of the legal notice and thus out of search engines and address databases
- Deliveries are recorded and visible in the portal immediately, even on the road
- No ties to an office, a law firm or a location
- Included in the Advanced plan at no extra cost
- Proof of identity and a signed power of attorney for receipt are mandatory
- Your name remains public; there is no anonymity in a legal notice
- Replaces neither business registration nor your tax address
Bottom line
The serviceable address is a reachability rule, not an obligation to publish your home address. Anyone visible online should keep the two apart. A receiving address with power of attorney for receipt is the cleanest way to do that: legally sound, location-independent, and with the certainty that nothing important is left sitting.
A legal notice without your home address
From the Advanced plan, use your ProxyHub address as your serviceable address. You see deliveries in the portal the same day, wherever you are. Cancel monthly, Bitcoin accepted.
Get started See plans