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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

#131

Post by xp84 »

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.

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

#132

Post by nobody9999 »

zippergz wrote: post #53
nemomarx wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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 clai…

>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.

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

#134

Post by lxgr »

xp84 wrote: post #131

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…

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.

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

#135

Post by bigstrat2003 »

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 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.

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

#136

Post by lxgr »

7e wrote: post #11

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

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).

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

#137

Post by lxgr »

reaperducer wrote: post #4

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 s…

> 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.

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

#138

Post by ajcp »

United857 wrote: post #127
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 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 :/

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.

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

#139

Post by dantillberg »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #135
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 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…

If this story is true, this would appear to be a simple vector for hijacking email intended for other gmail users. Hard to understate the severity if true.

Have you tested whether you can receive email directed to firstlast@gmail.com? Perhaps theirs is really firstlastt@gmail.com and all their contacts "correct" it.

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

#140

Post by Symbiote »

IAmBroom wrote: post #98
fsckboy wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

RDC 5321

> The local-part of a mailbox MUST BE treated as case sensitive.

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