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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

#61

Post by DamnInteresting »

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.

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

#62

Post by yakk0 »

saghm wrote: post #21
firesteelrain wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

Gmail also parses out periods in the address. j.smith@gmail.com will go to the same place as `jsmith@gmail.com`.

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.

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

#63

Post by layer8 »

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…

In principle you could just send them a fake Mailer-Daemon error 550 User Mismatch message. ;)

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

#64

Post by mNovak »

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.

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

#65

Post by zippergz »

garciasn wrote: post #6

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 mai…

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.

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

#66

Post by tastyfreeze »

saghm wrote: post #21
firesteelrain wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

Gmail also parses out periods in the address. j.smith@gmail.com will go to the same place as `jsmith@gmail.com`.

This is an useful to know for websites that incorrectly mark the address as invalid for a '.' in the local portion.

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

#68

Post by xatax »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #66
saghm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail also parses out periods in the address. j.smith@gmail.com will go to the same place as `jsmith@gmail.com`.

This is an useful to know for websites that incorrectly mark the address as invalid for a '.' in the local portion.

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.

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

#69

Post by PopePompus »

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)).

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

#70

Post by PopePompus »

duxup wrote: 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 .…

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.
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