The owner of a letterbox can transfer ownership to you if he or she agrees to allow you to adopt their box by editing the box and changing the owner to you.

If you are interested in adopting a box that has been abandoned, that is not an option. Sometimes the planters come back years later and turn out to be very upset upon learning that someone “took over” their box.

You can, however, foster an abandoned box.

The owner of the letterbox is able to transfer the ownership to you by using the Edit Box option and changing the name of the owner. Only a registered owner or planter can change the owner of the box. The adopter does not need to do anything (and can't do anything) to transfer ownership.

Atlas Quest used to have a policy allowing people to take ownership of box listings that appeared to be abandoned on Atlas Quest. This policy was discontinued after a handful of people who had failed to maintain their listings on Atlas Quest later came back years later, absolutely irate about their boxes being “taken over.” It didn’t matter that we tried to contact them about their listings. It didn’t matter that they had not logged into Atlas Quest for years. They felt it was unfair and a terribly rude thing to do.

So the current policy is no longer allow adoptions without the owner’s explicit permission, regardless of how long the box has been abandoned.

The policy of not allowing adoptions extends to creating new listings on AQ of adopted boxes. In other words, if you adopt a box on LbNA, do not list it on AQ without the explicit permission of the original owner.

You can, however, foster an abandoned box, which allows you to get notifications about the box and include an addendum on the box. You will not, however, be able to edit the box.

You may personally choose to maintain the physical letterbox—and, in fact, we hope you do so the box doesn't become litter. You do not need to adopt or foster a box to replace a full logbook, a cracked box or torn Ziplocs, although you are certainly welcome to foster the box is you'd like.

We’ve taken several measures to reduce the clutter of abandoned letterboxes in searches:

• On the Advanced Search page, you'll see an option to Hide Abandoned Boxes which is automatically selected for most searches by default. Any boxes whose owners have been MIA for 12 months or more will not be included in the search results if this option is checked.
• Also on the Advanced Search page is an option to Hide Strikeouts—boxes with an usually large number of consecutive attempts on them. If people are searching for abandoned boxes and coming up empty, this is a way to reduce that clutter. Most searches default to hide any box with three or more consecutive attempts.
• And another option from the Advanced Search page is to Hide Most Ignored boxes. Maybe people who look for a box but don't find it won't record it as an attempt, but they will often ignore the box to de-clutter their searches. If enough people are ignoring it, there might be a good reason for it!
• For members who are logged into Atlas Quest, you can adjust the 12 month span that a box is considered abandoned in your Letterbox Preferences. You can also change whether or not to show or hide abandoned boxes by default.
• For members who are logged into Atlas Quest, you can adjust the number of strikes it takes to strikeout a box from your Letterbox Preferences.
• And again, for members who are logged into Atlas Quest, you can adjust the number of people who are ignoring a box from your Letterbox Preferences before it joins the most ignored list.
• Any abandoned box with a status of active will automatically be converted into a status of unknown if at least one attempt is recorded on it.
• Any abandoned box with a status of unknown will automatically be converted into a status of active if a find is subsequently recorded on it.
• Any abandoned box with 5 or more strikes will be retired.
• Any abandoned box that’s listed as unavailable will be changed to retired.
• Comments on abandoned boxes are automatically approved immediately, so it is possible to communicate information about the letterbox through that means.

As a whole, these measures seem to provide a nice balance between respecting the ownership of boxes listed on AQ while protecting AQ from runaway abandoned listings cluttering up the results.