[HN Gopher] Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people'...
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Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail
Author : shayneo
Score : 137 points
Date : 2025-07-21 14:54 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (the418.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (the418.substack.com)
| duxup wrote:
| I wonder he he also receives that mail or was going to but
| someone caught it?
|
| My post office for a good year was horrendous about delivering me
| my neighbor's mail. I felt like a Jr. Mail Carrier in training ;)
|
| Last few years they've been SPOT on.
|
| I tried informed delivery but honestly it's more of a hassle for
| me as my wife says "this should have arrived today" and of course
| it doesn't so she thinks it's stolen and ... it arrives 3 days
| later.
| nemomarx wrote:
| I get that with normal tracking lately too, like Amazon
| reporting something is delivered the day before it actually
| shows up. Have we misaligned some metric where now shippers
| want to announce stuff early so they can claim speed?
| duxup wrote:
| Also, lots of emails. For some deliveries I get an email from
| the carrier, the company I bought the thing through, and
| someone who handles the actual thing on the other side of the
| retailer. App notifications. Like guies I get it ...
|
| Amusingly, for some obscure software, I write those emails ;)
| pwg wrote:
| > like Amazon reporting something is delivered the day before
| it actually shows up
|
| I feel like this one happens because the driver needs to meet
| quota today, so they scan the package delivered today, then
| when they are in the area tomorrow they actually deliver the
| package.
|
| Unfortunately, this makes "delivered today" not a reliable
| indicator of "I actually received the package today".
| stetrain wrote:
| That is an incentive for some shippers for sure, and it gets
| pushed down onto the (often overworked) delivery drivers.
| They have metrics on how many things they should deliver or
| attempt delivery each day and are sometimes judged harshly on
| those metrics.
|
| I have multiple times seen an "Out for Delivery" package
| switch to "Delivered" or "Delivery Attempted" at 10pm,
| presumably when the driver ended their shift and didn't want
| to be penalized for the undelivered packages. They usually
| showed up the following day.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _I have multiple times seen an "Out for Delivery" package
| switch to "Delivered" or "Delivery Attempted" at 10pm_
|
| Exactly this, it's infuriating.
|
| And you can usually tell because a) it's marked as
| delivered at a time rounded to a perfect hour, like 2:00 pm
| or 9:00 pm (not 8:34 pm), and b) there's no delivery photo,
| when there always is otherwise.
|
| But yeah, it's the driver not being able to make all
| deliveries (probably not their fault), but needing to fake
| the metrics. _Usually_ they drop it off the next day or two
| days later, but other times it just gets lost, and it 's
| harder to get a refund from the seller because it says
| delivered. So e.g. eBay will side with the seller in a
| dispute.
| zippergz wrote:
| I've definitely gotten the sense that the flip side of that
| is happening - in many cases, items get marked as "shipped"
| when the label is printed, but often shippers don't hand the
| package off to the carrier until days later. I can't prove it
| but sometimes it very much feels like sellers, especially on
| platforms like etsy and ebay, make sure to print the label
| immediately and mark the item as shipped so they can claim
| fast shipping, but then are in no hurry whatsoever to
| actually get the package in transit. Maybe this is not
| nefarious and is just a side effect of the way the systems
| work together, but as a customer it's pretty annoying. For me
| it's less about how long it takes to get the item and more
| about feeling mislead on whether it is actually on its way or
| not.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That definitely happens, I don't think it's intentionally
| nefarious though.
|
| They tend to package and label orders as they come in,
| that's the only thing you can do to be efficient -- you
| can't let them build up.
|
| But then they only drop off (or get pickup) 2x/week, e.g.
| Tues and Fri. Which might be fine if that's what their
| shipping times indicate.
|
| But then the buyer gets confused because they assume it was
| mailed immediately, which it wasn't. But _there 's no way_
| for a seller to print shipping labels from eBay in advance
| _without_ eBay marking it as "shipped".
|
| It gets even more confusing because with bulk pickups or
| dropoffs, they often don't even get scanned when the
| carrier receives them. They won't show as actually in the
| carrier's hands until they reach the first major hub, which
| can easily be a day or even two later.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I've definitely gotten the sense that the flip side of
| that is happening - in many cases, items get marked as
| "shipped" when the label is printed, but often shippers
| don't hand the package off to the carrier until days later.
|
| AIUI, Amazon's policy is that credit cards don't get
| charged _until the order ships_.
|
| As such, some shadier folks will create the label long
| before the item is actually shipped. However, since the
| label has been created, the order is now marked as
| "shipped" and the credit card is charged even though
| nothing has been packed, let alone actually shipped.
| kube-system wrote:
| No, these scans happen in sorting facilities in automated
| machinery far before delivery. A human still delivers the mail.
| duxup wrote:
| >A human still delivers the mail.
|
| Yes I'm aware of that ;)
| JohnFen wrote:
| > My post office for a good year was horrendous about
| delivering me my neighbor's mail.
|
| Mine still is. Misdelivered mail has done more to help me get
| to know my neighbors than anything else. It's pretty community-
| building.
| wombatpm wrote:
| My house number is 110. My neighbor at 116 bought a condo in
| Florida. Why do I know this? Because for 3 months I was
| getting all of his HOA correspondence. People make mistakes.
| Technology just allows people to make mistakes in seconds
| that would have taken minutes before.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| yea but getting your address wrong in a major purchase is a
| dipshit move.
| saghm wrote:
| I wouldn't be shocked if they just had messy handwriting,
| and someone misread their "0" for a "6". It doesn't seem
| like it would be _that_ hard to accidentally close the
| loop a little low.
| pwg wrote:
| > it's more of a hassle for me as my wife says "this should
| have arrived today"
|
| Same here (minus the "stolen" part). Wife overlooks the
| disclaimer on the page saying "delivery soon" and assumes that
| today's photos should be of today's deliveries. Continually
| pointing that fact out has not (yet) dissuaded her from this
| belief of "today's photos equal today's deliveries"
| saghm wrote:
| In my anecdotal experience, changes in how much of your
| neighbor's mail you get often ends up being due to a change to
| which individual carrier is delivering to your address. For
| over a decade growing up, we got our mail delivered by an
| exceptionally chill guy named Bill. As kids we'd get excited
| and run up when we saw him because he'd chat and joke with us,
| and he knew my parents by name and would chat with them often
| as well. We never got anyone else's mail from him, and no one
| ever got ours. Eventually, Bill got transferred to a different
| route, and the new person who delivered on our street would
| inexplicably stuff as many letters as he could into the insides
| of magazines going to a given address, and there was a high
| rate of getting our neighbors' mail inside of our magazines.
| When this first happened, my mother tried bring this up with
| him nicely, but nothing ended up changing. I can't remember how
| receptive he was to the feedback, but my mother didn't try to
| bring it up with him more than maybe once after that because
| she could tell it was a lost cause, and whenever it happened
| she'd roll her eyes and say that Bill would never make a
| mistake like that.
|
| After college, I lived in an apartment for over four years
| where apparently the woman who had previously been in it
| switched to a different apartment in the same building (which
| was quite large, so I don't think I ever met her). In the first
| couple of weeks, we for a couple pieces of mail of hers that
| we'd leave with the doorman, and he'd give it to her (or maybe
| have it put in her mailbox instead), and this stopped happening
| after that for a while. A few years later, we started getting
| some mail for her again out of nowhere, and the first time I
| brought it down to the doorman, he mentioned that the person
| delivering mail to our building had switched recently. I have
| no clue why someone who hadn't delivered to the building before
| would be inconsistently delivering mail to her old address, but
| it basically never stopped happening during my remaining time
| there.
| duxup wrote:
| I suspect the same. Over the years I've gotten waves of bad
| and good and honestly the bad just seemed like someone not
| paying attention to how much of the pile they grabbed ;)
|
| If I got a bad delivery I got a lot of other people's mail,
| like someone not paying attention and just grabbing multiple
| addresses at once and tossing them in my mailbox.
| PopePompus wrote:
| Hand-delivering mail intended for my neighbors, that was
| mistakenly placed in my mailbox, is how I met most of my
| neighbors. The sloppy USPS is an important part of my social
| life.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| USPS has a few times delivered items to our address which
| were intended for the recipient 1 block north with the same
| street number. It's how I've started to wonder if they might
| be Russian mafia all over there in their track suits.
| reaperducer wrote:
| This is no big deal. From the photograph in the blog, it's
| clearly a problem with the mail handling machine. No big whoop.
|
| As a reminder, there is no legal expectation of privacy for the
| _outside_ of your mail. Envelopes are no different than post
| cards. Anyone can legally read them.
|
| Years ago, I'd signed up for the Informed Delivery service, which
| is where these images originate.
|
| When I moved, I forgot to cancel the service and so received
| pictures of the next person's mail. It was simple to cancel.
| kube-system wrote:
| Did you not put in a change of address request? They
| automatically unenroll you from informed delivery.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| You shouldn't put in a change of address; USPS sells those
| addresses as a revenue source. Just manually change your
| address with each service.
| jerlam wrote:
| In my experience, they're also not particularly reliable
| either.
|
| After filing a change of address form, I got quite a bit of
| mail still going to the old address. The forwarded mail, if
| it arrived at all, was significantly delayed.
|
| It also costs money after a period of time, then expires.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They only forward first class mail and maybe
| newspapers/magazines IIRC.
| kube-system wrote:
| There are plenty of other sources selling my address
| anyway. Having mail forwarded is a good way for me to know
| which ones I need to update.
| joshmlewis wrote:
| Same thing happened to me except I wasn't able to stop it. I
| still receive pictures of mail going to an old PO Box I had.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| I was going to write the same thing. Only thing I will add that
| these scanners can actually peer into the envelopes due to I
| guess the bright light used by the scanners. I can sometimes
| read letters before I actually physically receive them.
|
| Therefore, the thicker the better and use privacy envelopes if
| you are really concerned.
| rtkwe wrote:
| I don't think I've ever gotten anything remotely sensitive
| not in a privacy envelope in years.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > these scanners can actually peer into the envelopes due to
| I guess the bright light used by the scanners
|
| You write that as if it's accidental.
| lxgr wrote:
| > Envelopes are no different than post cards. Anyone can
| legally read them.
|
| Anyone with access to them. You can absolutely not read my
| postcards, for example, because you don't have a key for my
| mailbox.
|
| > As a reminder, there is no legal expectation of privacy for
| the outside of your mail.
|
| Just because it's legal doesn't make it a great thing to
| happen.
| garciasn wrote:
| I get this semi-frequently too; but, the biggest problems for me
| w/this system are:
|
| 1. I get the pictures DAYS before the actual mail (weekends
| ignored). Why?!
|
| 2. I sometimes don't get pictures of the mail at all,
| particularly mail that's not bulk mail--it's from individual to
| individual.
|
| I could give a flying fuck that I'm going to be getting 5
| advertisements in a few days. I want to know when I'm getting
| ACTUAL mail and this system doesn't seem to capture that
| effectively.
| duped wrote:
| So the way that this works has nothing to do with user
| experience. A long while ago, USPS automated the mail sorting
| at their distribution centers by taking photos of the mail.
| Anything that could be sorted automatically was, anything that
| fails falls back to humans to sort.
|
| Someone over at USPS had the brilliant idea to save the photos
| they were taking to sort the mail anyway and email it to people
| at the addresses that the mail was being sorted to, and to do
| it for free.
|
| It's basically repurposing a critical piece of infrastructure
| to give you a little QoL bonus with your mail, and we should be
| really thankful anyone thought to do it instead of complaining
| about what's lacking. Especially when policymakers use every
| attempt to defund it so they can get their ultimate goal of
| privatizing mail and package delivery.
| nottorp wrote:
| > 1. I get the pictures DAYS before the actual mail (weekends
| ignored). Why?!
|
| I'd bet it's because the envelopes are photographed in some
| central location, the photos get sent at the speed of light but
| the physical envelopes only start getting to the last mile
| physical delivery people _after_.
| dhosek wrote:
| Indeed, there are regional sorting centers that then send to
| the local post offices to go to the carriers. Although what I
| find odd is that for residential delivery, I _always_ get the
| mail the same day, only at my P.O. Box does the mail
| sometimes come 1-3 days later.
|
| If you look at the email, the promise isn't "coming _today_ "
| but "coming _soon_ ".
| zippergz wrote:
| I think this is something that sucks about your particular
| sorting facility or you're just very unlucky. I've been using
| Informed Delivery since it launched, in two different states,
| and while it's not perfect, I find it pretty accurate,
| especially for normal mail (envelopes, postcards, and so
| forth). I'd guesstimate that it misses a real non-junk mail
| item less than 1% of the time, and it misstates when something
| will be delivered 5% of the time or less. Certainly not enough
| to offset the value of the service.
| 1a527dd5 wrote:
| I have a version of this; I have the email {{popular-asian-
| surname}}@gmail.com and I've seen _everything_.
|
| I've had many many bank statements from India.
|
| I've had someone in California order a brand new BMW and got the
| details for collection.
|
| I've had paypal invoices and statements (this is one funny
| because they refuse to action the delink).
|
| I used to reach out and tell them I didn't sign up for their
| service. But honestly, after doing it for a few years I gave up.
|
| Now, I mark as junk and move on.
|
| The best one I had was a dating site in Canada, I got it while
| sat next to me partner.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| I had someone send me their entire credit report. Luckily I am
| not a scammer and I deleted it for them. They sent me an Amazon
| gift card to thank me for not stealing their PII.
|
| I get DoorDash order notifications, Uber notifications, etc
|
| I am not sure how they signed up with my email as I never got a
| sign up notification
|
| Part of this also is because email / gmail is not case
| sensitive Jsmith@gmail.com is the same as jsmith@gmail.com. I
| see a lot of Jsmith vs jsmith (like how I actually use my
| email).
|
| Nothing is getting stolen from me but not sure how this is
| actually working for people.
| saghm wrote:
| Gmail also parses out periods in the address.
| j.smith@gmail.com will go to the same place as
| `jsmith@gmail.com`.
| yakk0 wrote:
| I have firstnamelastname@gmail.com and it surprises me how
| many other people have my same name. I get so much
| unintended mail, usually to firstname.lastname at gmail. I
| have found that in a lot of cases they have forgotten a
| middle initial. I usually let it go as spam unless it looks
| important like a credit card. What frustrates me is that
| these companies will not interface with me at all,
| sometimes not even leaving a note on the account.
|
| I understand from the security side why they wont, but I
| wish there was something they could do. I could easily log
| in and change a password then cancel the account, but I
| figure there's probably some legal trouble if I did that.
| Y_Y wrote:
| I get credit card stuff and credit report stuff from
| bozos with similar nanes to me. I used to try to inform
| them, they won't let me. The worst are Experian, who
| won't let me interact with them at all, because I can't
| prove I'm the person or people who've been mistakenly
| using my email address.
| saghm wrote:
| You'd think that they would be willing to interact with
| someone sending emails from the same address they're
| spamming!
| mnw21cam wrote:
| My stock reply to this used to be that you can send
| emails from anyone - who the email is sent _from_ is not
| authenticated.
|
| It's a little less true now with some of the newer
| protections, but only today I received a fairly subtle
| spam/scam supposedly from the main email address of a
| major retailer, so I think it's still sensible to never
| every trust the "From:" part of an email.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| This is an useful to know for websites that incorrectly
| mark the address as invalid for a '.' in the local portion.
| xatax wrote:
| Is this something you come across often? I always give
| the canonical spelling of my email, dots included, and
| can't remember a time when it wasn't accepted.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _email / gmail is not case sensitive Jsmith@gmail.com is
| the same as jsmith@gmail.com_
|
| gmail is not case sensitive. email systems are allowed to be
| case sensitive, most choose not to be. This used to be an
| issue to deal with when pre-internet legacy email addresses
| (like Lotus Notes corporate email, or Outlook/Exchange
| systems) were put onto the internet.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Email systems are allowed to be within their own domains.
| If an email is sent from Yahoo.com to Gmail.com, case is
| irrelevant.
|
| So, assuming case matters is foolish.
| jorts wrote:
| Same for me... I have a relatively obscure last name, but
| that's my Gmail address. I receive numerous random emails
| intended for other individuals with a similar name.
| sponaugle wrote:
| Indeed - There are not that many jeff sponaugle's, but I seem
| to get the email for the others from time to time!
| petesergeant wrote:
| > The best one I had was a dating site in Canada, I got it
| while sat next to me partner.
|
| The plausible deniability this email address gives you is
| remarkable
| nottorp wrote:
| Everyone I know that made an email on the major free providers
| using just a common surname (and maybe initial) in some
| language are getting other people's communications.
|
| It's like regular people don't use email unless forced to and
| forget what it is when giving it out...
| withinrafael wrote:
| Yep, same here. I've closed accounts folks opened with my email
| address, sent replies to humans confused why I haven't shown up
| to an appointment, etc. I just can't stop the flow of emails
| from these folks using my email address for seemingly
| legitimate business.
|
| Google doesn't offer anything in the way of migration or
| consolidation of various email-linked data (e.g., store
| purchases) so I just let mail accumulate and delete everything
| manually once every few months.
| anonu wrote:
| This happens to me too - mostly from people in South America: i
| get their phone bills, receipts, etc... And now the knock on
| effect of spam is crushing my inbox. I know its spam related to
| these emails because its all in Spanish. I am thinking of
| abandoning my gmail to something new.
| jer0me wrote:
| Make a filter for emails that contain "n"
| bxparks wrote:
| Haha. Do you have a similar character for Japanese? Some
| douche bag added my GitHub email address into some Japanese
| spam farm a few weeks ago. I am now flooded with Japanese
| spam. I don't read or speak a word of Japanese.
| Uvix wrote:
| ha or su would be my suggestions.
| lvl155 wrote:
| This is me. I was one of first batches of gmail users when it
| went public. I have a common name. It's wild that people will
| just use my email because they forget their own email address.
| tortilla wrote:
| Same. Mine is my username here.
|
| It did show me early on why web apps need to verify email
| ownership.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Yep, got mine in 2006.
| masfuerte wrote:
| I'm in the same boat. I assume people do it because some
| website is demanding an email address and they don't want to
| give one, so they give the "default" one.
| ghaff wrote:
| I haven't gotten any that I know of for years, but when my
| school initially created email forwarding, it let you choose
| anything--so I just used my first name which is common but
| not _that_ common. (To this day if I 'm in a meeting with
| someone who shares it, we regularly get confused when someone
| else asks something that I have no idea about.) I got all
| sorts of board meeting minutes and other emails from people
| who assumed I was that first name early-on.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| My email address is my full name. It's not a common one, there
| are four of us that I can discover online.
|
| My Floridian namesake has a troubled existence - I get emails
| from debt collectors, the police, court summons, and his
| employer, an HVAC company.
|
| He also likes Dolly Parton and crystal meth, and goes to
| rennaisance fayres.
|
| My namesake from BC likes to go to nightclubs and Costco, and
| is very busy on the gay dating scheme.
|
| I find it sweet they like to keep me in the loop.
| bogrollben wrote:
| As a movie, this would do well at the Cannes Film Festival.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| "When one of them [played by George Clooney] inherits a
| derelict amusement park, which turns out to include an
| active marijuana field, hilarity ensues."
| buzer wrote:
| I recently logged into one of my email addresses that I hadn't
| used in years and discovered quite a few people had used it as
| their address for multiple things (of course they didn't have
| access to it so everything was unread). Lots of services do not
| really bother to validate the email address (there were e.g.
| Facebook, Instagram & TikTok emails).
|
| One bigger item was that people were sending details regarding
| an estate & inheritance. This included an attorney office in
| Finland (to be clear, I'm also originally from Finland). After
| finding out I sent email to their DPO as this likely qualifies
| as GDPR security incident as the emails contained things like
| names, SSNs, addresses & of course details regarding how
| inheritance was split. I never got an answer so I reported it
| to Finnish DPA. I got reply from them pretty quickly that they
| contacted the DPO and that DPO will be in contact with me soon
| & the case is closed from DPA side. This was 4 months ago, I'm
| yet to be contacted by them.
| huslage wrote:
| I briefly had {{firstname}}@gmail.com back when it was invite
| only. Man that was a mistake.
| layer8 wrote:
| In principle you could just send them a fake Mailer-Daemon
| error 550 User Mismatch message. ;)
| mixdup wrote:
| I have first initial last name @gmail.com and it is a VERY
| common English language last name. This phenomenon got so bad I
| just abandoned that address and account. At some point you
| can't keep up with it, and marking legit email as spam has
| consequences of now MY email is getting marked as spam
| sntxrr wrote:
| I did as well. The things I've seen for other people..
| <scrubs eyes>
| wcoenen wrote:
| I once got an email about the funeral arrangements for
| somebody's mother. I know this person very well, because he
| uses my email address for everything. I know what internet
| subscription he has. I know where he bought his e-bike. Where
| he goes on holiday. Etc.
|
| And he's actually not the only person doing this! As far as I
| can tell, the only unusual thing about my Gmail is that it's
| relatively short and has no numbers. I suspect people just
| forget to add the digits at the end of their own address.
| streetnoodles wrote:
| I get a lot of random email for other people with the same
| first initial/last name as me. I had one specific person
| using my email for a lot of things.
|
| I just canceled her membership in a bowling league, and when
| the league reached out to ask why, I told them I have no idea
| who <her name> is. I stopped getting email meant for her
| after that.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Ugh, I could've written this. I have my HN username at one of
| the old webmail providers. I log in there about once a year
| to keep the account live (because said provider re-issues
| unused accounts after a while). Each time, I see another
| person's info. My name isn't freakishly unusual, but neither
| is it John Smith.
|
| I've used my personal experience in a design meeting where
| some newer PMs were IMO unreasonably sure that users wouldn't
| mistype their own email address. Oh, let me tell ya, they
| absolutely 100% do.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I have the opposite of this. My primary email address is
| hello@firstnameMIlastname.com. But there's another guy who
| has the same name, and doesn't include his middle initial in
| his domain. It doesn't appear that uses hello@, so maybe he
| doesn't get my mail, but there have been many times where
| someone insists they've sent me something, only for me to
| find out they didn't include my middle initial and were
| sending stuff to him, despite the fact that I sent them my
| email correctly. Why didn't they just copy and paste?
| DavidSJ wrote:
| _I once got an email about the funeral arrangements for
| somebody 's mother. I know this person very well, because he
| uses my email address for everything. I know what internet
| subscription he has. I know where he bought his e-bike. Where
| he goes on holiday. Etc._
|
| I was expecting this person to be you.
| fortran77 wrote:
| The problem is if you are also a user of these services you
| can't mark as junk because you'll stop geting paypal, bank,
| airline, car rental emails, etc.
|
| I have the same issue. My gmail is {{my last name}}@gmail.com
| Just my last name. It's not that common, but there are about
| 500 people with it according to US Census data.
| gsharma wrote:
| My HN username is also my gmail. I've got most of the stuff you
| mentioned, including unencrypted copies of US tax returns (with
| SSN) and house buying paperwork.
|
| > I used to reach out and tell them I didn't sign up for their
| service. But honestly, after doing it for a few years I gave
| up.
|
| Same here. It's surprising that most of the services don't use
| double-opt in before sending emails.
|
| Some day, I want to use an LLM to identify those emails and
| label them.
| United857 wrote:
| I have an extremely common first and last name and my email
| address is first.last@gmail.
|
| I get my fair share of misaddressed mail but it doesn't help
| that I share the same name as the CEO of a major hotel chain's
| timeshare business so I've getting tons of complaints about
| that :/
| ajcp wrote:
| Your email address is actually firstlast@gmail.com.
|
| GMail doesn't care about dots, so you could say your email
| address is f.i.r.s.t.l.a.s.t@gmail.com for all the good it
| does. Using the dot probably does more harm, as it makes
| people think it's a legit differentiator.
| Rodeoclash wrote:
| I've owned the domain name richardson.co.nz for some 25 years
| now and since then someone started a Richardson's realestate
| and registered richardsons.co.nz (note the additional "s").
|
| I left the catch-all on my domains email going for a year or
| two before I had to disable it. The sheer amount of house
| blueprints, sensitive information about transfers etc was
| overwhelming.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I have one like that. I have the email first.last@gmail.com,
| and I have a _very_ uncommon last name. Lo and behold, Google
| let some dude in Australia who happens to share my name sign up
| with firstlast@gmail.com. According to the docs the two should
| be equivalent, so they shouldn 't have let him sign up, but
| they did... and now I get his email all the time. I have gotten
| job offers, bills from medical offices, even one follow up
| email from his therapist. And lots and lots of ads, of course.
| I have tried to let people know (when it's a real person
| contacting me) to let this guy know about the email situation,
| but either they don't reach out to him or he doesn't care. At
| this point I just delete all the emails meant for him without
| reading them, and figure if he misses out on a job offer or
| something... I tried my best.
|
| Still, bizarre that the situation was allowed to occur in the
| first place by Google. Clearly they need to beef up their
| account creation checks a bit.
| 7e wrote:
| You have it easy! Occasionally USPS _delivers_ me other people 's
| mail!
| LorenDB wrote:
| Not just a USPS problem. Fedex dropped a package off at my
| neighbor's house the other day. Luckily I have good neighbors,
| so he brought it right over.
| bxparks wrote:
| Not just USPS and FedEx.
|
| UPS has dropped the last 3 of my packages to my neighbor's
| house. They try to be helpful though. They took pictures of
| the packages, sitting against various walls and doors that I
| didn't recognize at all. I had to guess which of my
| neighbors.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Hah yes came here to say this, I often get a neighbors mail in
| my mailbox... so the scanning issue seems relatively minor.
| oarla wrote:
| This is an epidemic in my community. At least twice a month I
| walk over to my neighbors and deliver their mail left in my
| mailbox. They do the same to me. We've complained to the local
| post office, but they're dealing with staffing issues and can't
| guarantee anything.
|
| I feel it's a major invasion of privacy. I don't want to know
| stuff about my neighbors like who they bank with, have student
| loans with or which doctors they go to. They also find out
| those things about me. But not much we can do about it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not expect any service to be 100% accurate.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| About once a month for me. I assume some of my mail ends up
| with other people as well.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Same. I also dont get mail for days then suddenly my box is
| stuffed.
| manithree wrote:
| USPS, FedEx, UPS, and Amazon all do this, but USPS is by far
| the worst here.
|
| There's a new (well, it was several years ago) townhome in the
| town to the west that has exactly the same street address as
| mine, just a different city and ZIP code (just one digit
| different). We got their mail, packages, etc. a LOT for years.
| The best was when we got home and FedEx had dropped of a set of
| 4 overnighted tires on our porch.
|
| The townhome is a rental, and sometimes, even when Amazon sends
| me a photo of their front porch, the townhome tenants claim
| they didn't get anything of ours. Either they're theives or
| they have a lot of porch pirates.
| lxgr wrote:
| Same here, and Informed Delivery is actually a great feature
| for that (i.e. tracking whether one of my letters probably went
| to somebody else's mailbox again and whether it's worth asking
| the neighbors or looking on top of their mailboxes).
| somehnguy wrote:
| Where this gets interesting is that very often you can see
| through the envelope slightly.
|
| It's similar to if you hold a flashlight to the back of an
| envelope and can then see 'through' it to read the paper inside.
| nemomarx wrote:
| This is why some envelopes have a pattern on the inside for
| privacy, right? I thought that was standardized a while ago for
| anything official and important. Smaller card sized envelopes
| maybe not though
| somehnguy wrote:
| Yeah I believe so. Going through some of my old informed
| delivery emails I see a few with the crosshatch privacy
| pattern which seems to work reasonably well. I wonder if
| manipulating the image in some way (brightness, etc) may
| reduce that effect.
|
| I also have a number of mailings from my bank that include
| things like account balances & numbers, with no privacy
| pattern. So it seems hit or miss.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Not really. It's good for snagging coupon codes, but not much
| else. Anything important will (should) be inside an envelope
| that is thick enough to block this trick.
| somehnguy wrote:
| Just like USPS should not send you images of other peoples
| mail, a lot of mail isn't in the type of envelope they should
| be. I'm looking at multiple bank statements where I can read
| balances.
|
| Another vector is the plastic window many envelopes have to
| show the addressee printed on the paper inside. I have
| another healthcare related letter I can read through that.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| The government does a ton of genuinely bad privacy violations.
| Leaking pictures of the outside of an envelope is not one of
| them.
|
| Please stop getting people riled up about fake problems. You are
| pissing in the pool.
| tomrod wrote:
| Genuinely curious -- was your comment directed towards the post
| author?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| This happens to me sometimes. I bought a house and occasionally
| get pictures of the previous owners mail. I assume it's because
| these scans take place before the new address forwarding because
| I don't receive their mail.
| anonu wrote:
| 90% of my snail mail is junk - so it really does not matter.
| jasonthorsness wrote:
| Wow TIL about the USPS Informed Delivery service that sends
| pictures of your mail for free. Apparently OP might occasionally
| see my mail but who cares, this is great
| https://www.usps.com/manage/informed-delivery.htm
| joezydeco wrote:
| I use this service. It's not that useful but sometimes it's
| good to see when an expected piece of mail is (roughly) going
| to arrive.
|
| From what I can tell this was a capability the USPS has had for
| a while, probably going back to the days of anthrax spores
| being sent to politicians. The USPS was probably directed to
| track where every piece of mail came from and image the outside
| of it.
|
| Informed Delivery was just a monetization of that system. Note
| that some pieces of mail trigger ads from third party
| companies.
| jasonthorsness wrote:
| It was free to sign up, but...
|
| > Note that some pieces of mail trigger ads from third party
| companies.
|
| of course they do (although the mail itself is like 95% ads
| anyway with junk mail so I guess I won't really complain)
| dhosek wrote:
| The ones that amuse me the most are the ads for--informed
| delivery.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| This service is extremely valuable to me. I monitor my
| elderly mother's mail (she lives on her own, but several
| hours away), checking for anything important as well as
| obvious junk. Then, when I talk to her on the phone, we go
| through her mail together and I know how the conversation
| should go.
| impish9208 wrote:
| > From what I can tell this was a capability the USPS has had
| for a while, probably going back to the days of anthrax
| spores being sent to politicians. The USPS was probably
| directed to track where every piece of mail came from and
| image the outside of it.
|
| I don't think that's accurate. They already had the
| scanning/imaging pipeline for routing and sorting. It wasn't
| until later that they realized it'd be a good service to
| email the images to the recipients every morning - hence,
| Informed Delivery. It's like a side-project that grew into a
| bonafide feature.
| timewizard wrote:
| No. It goes back to the 1990s when we used Data Entry
| Operators to key mail details that could not be read by
| OCR. This is all so the mail goes into the truck sorted.
| That is the most important part of the mail delivery
| operation.
|
| The fact that you can get pictures from this system is the
| innovation but imaging has existed for much longer than
| this product.
| kccqzy wrote:
| This system interacts poorly with the USPS Change-of-Address
| system. Whenever I move, I either get no emails about my mail
| or I get two emails per day with the same images. When I get no
| more emails, sometimes they will mail me a letter with a
| validation code to continue getting emails, but my experience
| is that I need to enter the same validation code multiple times
| to get access restored.
| encom wrote:
| What's the point of a service that emails you pictures of your
| snail mail? You'll know about it anyway when it's delivered, and
| unlike a parcel, no action is required to receive it. Not snark,
| I'm legitimately asking - I'm probably missing something.
|
| I legitimately can't remember the last time I received actual
| mail in my mailbox. Everything goes to e-boks.dk.
| toast0 wrote:
| If you only rarely get mail in your box, you don't neee to
| check it regularly, unless something is coming.
|
| Alternately, if you're away and something important is
| arriving, you can ask someone to check in on it for you. Maybe
| they would normally just stack it all up, but this one is
| interesting enough from the envelope that you'd like them to
| take a look inside.
| smelendez wrote:
| It's mostly only mildly useful for me. But I recently had a
| bank send me a new debit card as mine was about to expire, and
| the card never arrived. The bank was under the impression it
| was delivered a certain day, and I was able to tell them that I
| have Informed Delivery and as far as I could tell, the USPS
| never even attempted to deliver the card (or, as it happened,
| anything else that particular day).
|
| If you are waiting on a particular piece of mail it sometimes
| can be handy to know it'll be in your box soon instead of
| repeatedly checking the tracking or double-checking with the
| sender. If you don't receive mail every day, and your mailbox
| is at all exposed to the elements, it can remind you to check
| the box that day.
|
| And if your mail is delivered where other people have access to
| it--a spouse, kids, roommates, etc.--it can let you know to
| check in with them if you don't see something that they may
| have put in an unusual place.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I started using it once I moved into an apartment complex
| where the mailboxes are not between the entrance and my
| apartment. If I know I have mail coming that is actually
| important I reroute to get the mail, which would be annoying
| to do every day.
| rattus_rattus wrote:
| I find it super helpful! I get the emails for both my personal
| mail box on my street (nice to know if I should check it today
| or if it's just junk and I can check it tomorrow or the next
| day) and for a PO Box.
|
| I am the treasurer for an organization related to my job. We
| don't usually get mail and the PO Box is located a few towns
| over. I rely on the emails to know when I need to visit the PO
| Box. It saves me gas and time, so I love it. Even if the PO Box
| was nearby, the emails would still save me time and hassle.
| encom wrote:
| Yea PO boxes absolutely make sense, didn't think of that.
| seiferteric wrote:
| This happened to me before and I reported it through their
| website and they actually fixed it for me at least, I guess the
| problem still exists though.
| jchw wrote:
| I've noticed this too.
|
| That said, it's not really terribly unusual to actually just
| _receive_ someone else 's mail. I've gotten mail that was meant
| to go to my neighbors a number of times. So I reckon that an
| issue like this probably isn't a big deal in the long run; if it
| was that big of a concern, then _actually_ accidentally
| delivering to the slightly-wrong-address would be worse.
| DamnInteresting wrote:
| I use Informed Delivery for my PO box since I don't get much mail
| there. The worst thing about it is that the USPS uses the system
| to announce when there are new episodes of _Mailin' It! - The
| Official USPS Podcast_.
|
| They send the daily digest saying "You have 1 mailpiece arriving
| soon." Instead of the usual picture of the 'mailpiece', it's an
| image illustrating the episode. There is no physical mail
| corresponding to this alert, it's electronic junk mail. Spam.
| Ugh. There is no opt out for these apart from canceling the
| service entirely.
| dml2135 wrote:
| Physical junk mail is the USPS' bread and butter, so it's not
| surprising that they have no qualms about sending email spam
| either.
| phyzome wrote:
| That would be an instant service cancellation for me.
| creer wrote:
| Yep. Informed Delivery is mostly spam. (They recently added a
| note, something "no physical mail with this notice" - I guess
| others than me had started flagging them as lost.)
|
| Informed Delivery also highlights mail lost in (some part) of
| the delivery process. Such as delivered to the wrong PO Box or
| the wrong address, or who knows what other creative methods
| they might think of. Then there is a process to point that out
| and "trigger a search"... and get only automated "Eh, what are
| you gonna do" kinds of answers.
|
| Can't wait for being able to stop receiving paper entirely.
| Which will be a while because the other guys (the online guys)
| also love to build broken systems.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| i lost my mail for a while when i was using informed
| delivery. i tried the lost mail report on a few hand written
| letters i saw scanned and never received. nothing happened
| lol
|
| i stopped using the email notifications and check it
| occasionally now
| mNovak wrote:
| I get this all the time, I assume because I live in an apartment
| an they're previous residents. The interesting thing is they
| don't actually get delivered, so it's being caught somewhere in
| the system.
|
| That said I do also get misdelivered mail, which I don't get
| Informed Delivery for. I've gotten tax documents, jury summons,
| settlement checks, you name it. People really need to file a
| change of address.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Occasionally USPS sends me other people's mail
|
| More than Occasionally
| PopePompus wrote:
| This happens to me almost daily. I get photos of mail sent to the
| couple I bought my house from 4.5 years ago. Their mail never
| actually arrives in my mailbox, but it's still quite a privacy
| breech for the former owners (who were clearly operating a
| business out of their home, in violation of the HOA rules (not
| that I care an iota)).
| dhosek wrote:
| What I've observed from six years of informed delivery is that
| the sorting step that generates the images for informed
| delivery happens before the step that handles forwarding and
| return to sender.
|
| I'm not sure that any of the cases are that big of a privacy
| breach: It's more inline with either getting the neighbor's
| mail in your mailbox (which in my experience happens at about
| the same rate) or getting previous residents' mail in your
| mailbox (although my current carrier, after checking with me,
| intercepts most of these on her own initiative so I don't have
| to deal with them).
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Every now and then I return-to-sender something that looks
| important to my address's previous resident and sharpie out the
| barcode along the bottom. If you don't do this your RTS items
| will come back to you regardless of what you stamp it with. Even
| still I receive an informed delivery photo of it.
|
| My belief is that the informed delivery system is using optical
| recognition while the sorters are using the barcodes.
| supernova87a wrote:
| Is the incorrectly shared mail piece addressed to someone with a
| quite similar address, or potentially someone who previously
| lived there?
|
| Just having thought once in a while about how complicated
| addresses are, I can only imagine all the things that can go
| wrong. (both for the post office, and for example, credit
| cards/banks that have to use addresses in validation of
| purchases, etc)
|
| Imagine an apartment building with many units. Think of how
| people differently specify on the address lines which unit they
| live in? What if they leave off their unit #? What about
| apartments that are numbered "345 1/2 Second Street"?
|
| What about a new person with the same last name that appears at
| an address? What do you do about that? Is an address that differs
| by a very subtle letter a different household? E.g. "345b Second
| Street"? Should you ship a package there or approve a credit
| card, or is that likely to be an attempt to fraudulently divert
| mail to someone else who is nonexistent?
|
| I'm sure it's endlessly complicated, and I have no idea. But I
| know it will be complicated.
| mv4 wrote:
| Every time this happened to me, it was due to incorrect
| interpretation of the number portion of my street address.
| Usually confusing 0 and 8.
|
| For example, my address is 150 Main Street and it would send me
| photos of mail addressed to 158 Main Street.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| I often also actually get other people's mail. Not every day, not
| even every month, but a couple times a year.
|
| I don't consider this a vulnerability, per se. This is the the
| usual level of uncertainty when dealing with physical objects.
| ews wrote:
| USPS started sending me pictures of the place where I used to
| live 5 years ago all the sudden, they are not addressed to me and
| there is no way I can stop these mails (I could block them on
| gmail but that will affect my own digest).
| joecool1029 wrote:
| I have an even better version. I rent a small PO box and I keep
| getting the condo management company's mail meant for the next PO
| box over. Interestingly enough while informed delivery worked in
| the pilot program, they kicked it out when it was launched
| because my box is commercial. So I don't know when mail is
| inbound and just have to check when I think there's something.
|
| I sometimes only check the box once a month, and it's not
| uncommon it's full of bill pay checks for people's rent lol.
| sroerick wrote:
| I posted this on the Substack, but
|
| At one point, I entered the wrong address when I was forwarding
| my mail. As a result, I got my mail sent to a strangers PO Box.
| As a side effect, I then began to receive Informed Delivery for
| this stranger to this very day.
|
| In addition, I once had the Post Office disable my address. It
| was like a 101B address and they didn't consider it legitimate
| with the city. As a result, they were unable to forward mail when
| I left that house, and once again, and they were unable to
| disable the informed consent for this house.
|
| As a result of this, I see every piece of mail that two separate
| strangers receive. I have gone to the post office a half dozen
| times in the last 5 years to try to disable this, and have
| repeatedly been told there is absolutely nothing that can be
| done.
| mystraline wrote:
| You can solve this.
|
| Contact your federal senators and/or federal house reps, and
| tell them that USPS is sending pictures of other peoples' mail.
|
| Or if you dont want to do that, then contact USPS Office of
| Inspector General. uspsoig.gov/
|
| The IG's are absolutely terrifying if you're on the wrong side.
| And you're 100% in the right, and they're in the wrong.
| xp84 wrote:
| Practically speaking, the outsides of envelopes addressed to you
| are much more like unencrypted HTTP traffic were: Trivial for
| many people other than sender and receiver to become aware of,
| therefore it's advisable to not print interesting secrets on the
| outside of mail in the first place (and indeed, you can just
| address mail without any front-facing return address or any
| return address if you don't want a chance of that data leak
| through any means).
|
| Probably half of people get their mail in an unlocked mailbox
| that anyone can casually open and peek at before you get home
| from work. And every postal worker can of course see the
| information as they handle the mail.
|
| Not saying that's ideal, but just pointing out that this doesn't
| represent a tremendous loss of privacy.
| lxgr wrote:
| Exactly: Readable to anyone (that can insert themselves into)
| the delivery path - which is only very few people.
|
| Just because there's other privacy issues with physical mail
| doesn't mean there ought to be even more when it comes to
| digital mail notifications.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| It's possible that their eLOT, delivery point code, or some other
| auxiliary USPS metadata is messed up for themselves or their
| neighbor.
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