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Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail

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Re: Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail

#111

Post by sitzkrieg »

creer wrote: post #97
DamnInteresting wrote: post #61

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…

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 o…

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

Re: Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail

#112

Post by sitzkrieg »

wombatpm wrote: post #57
JohnFen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

yea but getting your address wrong in a major purchase is a dipshit move.

Re: Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail

#113

Post by gsharma »

1a527dd5 wrote: post #10

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 h…

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.

Re: Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail

#114

Post by impish9208 »

joezydeco wrote: post #48
jasonthorsness wrote: post #37

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

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 mon…

> 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.

Re: Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail

#115

Post by kstrauser »

wcoenen wrote: post #101
1a527dd5 wrote: post #10

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 h…

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.…

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.

Re: Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail

#117

Post by thesuitonym »

wcoenen wrote: post #101
1a527dd5 wrote: post #10

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 h…

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 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?

Re: Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail

#118

Post by bxparks »

jer0me wrote: post #105
anonu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Make a filter for emails that contain “ñ”

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.

Re: Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail

#119

Post by bxparks »

LorenDB wrote: post #24
7e wrote: post #11

You have it easy! Occasionally USPS delivers me other people's mail!

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.

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.

Re: Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail

#120

Post by saghm »

Y_Y wrote: post #90
yakk0 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

You'd think that they would be willing to interact with someone sending emails from the same address they're spamming!
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