A Bug in the Mail
Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail.
I’ve been using Informed Delivery from USPS for over 5 years now, and am generally a big fan. However, I’ve noticed that every once in a while I’ll catch a scan of a piece of mail that is not addressed to me. Here is an example of the most recent.
Notice, the image contains 2 pieces of mail. The one in back is addressed to me, and I assume I’ll receive it later today. The one in front is addressed to some unknown neighbor in my zip code.
As a security conscious software developer, this kind of “leak” sticks out. And while it’s probably not the biggest deal, I find it interesting that USPS sends me pictures of other people’s mail, and almost certainly sends pictures of my mail to my neighbors every now and again.
At one point, I entered the wrong address when I was forwarding my mail. As a result, I got my mail sent to a strangers PO Box. As a side effect, I then began to receive Informed Delivery for this stranger to this very day.
In addition, I once had the Post Office disable my address. It was like a 101B address and they didn’t consider it legitimate with the city. As a result, they were unable to forward mail when I left that house, and once again, and they were unable to disable the informed consent for this house.
As a result of this, I see every piece of mail that two separate strangers receive. I have gone to the post office a half dozen times in the last 5 years to try to disable this, and have repeatedly been told there is absolutely nothing that can be done.
I'm PO Box 2 and every day I get several pictures of mail addressed to PO Box 1, a collection agency, I assume because the serifs added to a 1 look similar to a 2.