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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

#91

Post by supernova87a »

Is the incorrectly shared mail piece addressed to someone with a quite similar address, or potentially someone who previously lived there?

Just having thought once in a while about how complicated addresses are, I can only imagine all the things that can go wrong. (both for the post office, and for example, credit cards/banks that have to use addresses in validation of purchases, etc)

Imagine an apartment building with many units. Think of how people differently specify on the address lines which unit they live in? What if they leave off their unit #? What about apartments that are numbered "345 1/2 Second Street"?

What about a new person with the same last name that appears at an address? What do you do about that? Is an address that differs by a very subtle letter a different household? E.g. "345b Second Street"? Should you ship a package there or approve a credit card, or is that likely to be an attempt to fraudulently divert mail to someone else who is nonexistent?

I'm sure it's endlessly complicated, and I have no idea. But I know it will be complicated.

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

#92

Post by jimt1234 »

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…

This service is extremely valuable to me. I monitor my elderly mother's mail (she lives on her own, but several hours away), checking for anything important as well as obvious junk. Then, when I talk to her on the phone, we go through her mail together and I know how the conversation should go.

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

#93

Post by phyzome »

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…

That would be an instant service cancellation for me.

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

#94

Post by kccqzy »

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

This system interacts poorly with the USPS Change-of-Address system. Whenever I move, I either get no emails about my mail or I get two emails per day with the same images. When I get no more emails, sometimes they will mail me a letter with a validation code to continue getting emails, but my experience is that I need to enter the same validation code multiple times to get access restored.

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

#95

Post by ghaff »

lvl155 wrote: post #40
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…

This is me. I was one of first batches of gmail users when it went public. I have a common name. It’s wild that people will just use my email because they forget their own email address.

I haven't gotten any that I know of for years, but when my school initially created email forwarding, it let you choose anything--so I just used my first name which is common but not that common. (To this day if I'm in a meeting with someone who shares it, we regularly get confused when someone else asks something that I have no idea about.) I got all sorts of board meeting minutes and other emails from people who assumed I was that first name early-on.

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

#97

Post by creer »

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 out and "trigger a search"... and get only automated "Eh, what are you gonna do" kinds of answers.

Can't wait for being able to stop receiving paper entirely. Which will be a while because the other guys (the online guys) also love to build broken systems.

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

#98

Post by IAmBroom »

fsckboy wrote: post #88
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…

> 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.

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

#99

Post by IAmBroom »

bogrollben wrote: post #86
madaxe_again wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As a movie, this would do well at the Cannes Film Festival.

"When one of them [played by George Clooney] inherits a derelict amusement park, which turns out to include an active marijuana field, hilarity ensues."

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

#100

Post by crazygringo »

stetrain wrote: post #50
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?

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 did…

> I have multiple times seen an "Out for Delivery" package switch to "Delivered" or "Delivery Attempted" at 10pm

Exactly this, it's infuriating.

And you can usually tell because a) it's marked as delivered at a time rounded to a perfect hour, like 2:00 pm or 9:00 pm (not 8:34 pm), and b) there's no delivery photo, when there always is otherwise.

But yeah, it's the driver not being able to make all deliveries (probably not their fault), but needing to fake the metrics. Usually they drop it off the next day or two days later, but other times it just gets lost, and it's harder to get a refund from the seller because it says delivered. So e.g. eBay will side with the seller in a dispute.

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