Live data from Hacker News

Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail

the418.substack.com

41–50 of 193 posts

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

#41

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 dating scheme.

I find it sweet they like to keep me in the loop.

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

#43
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.

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

#44
post #2

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 .…

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.

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

#45

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…

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.

I don't think I've ever gotten anything remotely sensitive not in a privacy envelope in years.

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

#46
post #44
post #2

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 .…

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 oft…

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.

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

#48

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 monetization of that system. Note that some pieces of mail trigger ads from third party companies.

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

#49
post #38

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.

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.

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

#50
post #3
post #2

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 .…

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?

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.

Post reply on HN