Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by 747fulloftapes » Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 4:05 AM UTC

madaxe_again wrote: post #41

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 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 datin…

I, too, have the full name email address and I, too, have received mail for others with the same name. I've long since stopped acting on any emails except for extraordinary situations. I don't understand why people react so negatively to news they've made a mistake as if it's my fault they're using the wrong address.

But, yeah, one of my namesakes has a boyfriend who still hasn't realized the photos of antiques and his penis aren't reaching my namesake. Another has a son attending a British school in Hong Kong who is somehow earning poor marks in Mathematics /and/ Physical Education. I'm worried for a third that still hasn't finished his required food safety and hygiene courses. I believe a fourth is an Irish landlord with an increasingly frustrated tenant - who appears to be emailing both my namesake and me every time. Recently, it's been issues with her kitchen sink plumbing.

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

#192

Post by xp84 » Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 8:12 PM UTC

lxgr wrote: post #134

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.

The errors this article is about are about exactly one person selected basically at random getting to see something not for them. This seems to me about as scandalous as if an engineer looked at the raw traffic on a switch as ASCII text and occasionally sees the contents of a randomly-selected email. Absent the ability to predict and target this... shrug

I don't know if it would be possible to have the ID service at all if one were not tolerant of one in a million times an envelope sticks to another one and ends up in someone else's image file.

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

#193

Post by BobbyTables2 » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 2:06 AM UTC

madcaptenor wrote: post #180

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same problem. There are about 5-7 active idiots using “firstlast@gmail.com” and I get them all. Suspect their real email is something like “firstlast10” or “firstlest” (minor spelling variant). Not sure if they deliberately misspell their email or are just stupid. For a while really thought amount was compromised. Slowly I realized they are just idiots and assholes. They don’t always pay bills, buy $100 T-…

If they're giving their e-mail address to other people, it's possible that those other people are hearing "lest" and respelling it as "last". So it's not the person that shares a name with you that's stupid, but the people they deal with.

Had similar thought, could be part of it, but I also get online service emails too.