Is this some kind of scam or identity theft?
November 29, 2010 7:37 PM Subscribe
Suddenly getting a lot of mail for people who don't live here. Is this something to be concerned about?
I've lived in the basement apartment I'm in for the better part of 10 years. My landlady has lived upstairs since the 70s, and before me, her children lived in my apartment. And before they lived in my apartment, it was an unfinished basement. So there's a very long time span for which I can account for every occupant of this address. I've also been the one who checked the mail for most of the time I lived here, so I'm well acquainted with what our mail usually looks like.
In the last 3 months or so, we've started getting mail for other people -- credit card bills for one guy, and random mail for another, and now, today, a letter for a third from an employment center. The letters are for completely different sounding names. The credit card bills are for Bruce Campbell, while today's was for Ibrahim something or other, and the random pieces of mail have a Japanese last name and a first initial. Legitimate seeming mail, the kind where address errors would be unusual. No packages.
So is there some kind of potential scam or identity theft happening here? What might it be?
I've been returning the letters to sender with 'no person here by that name' written on the front of them. Is there something else I should be doing? Or worrying about?
(This is in Canada, in case postal system is somehow relevant.)
I've lived in the basement apartment I'm in for the better part of 10 years. My landlady has lived upstairs since the 70s, and before me, her children lived in my apartment. And before they lived in my apartment, it was an unfinished basement. So there's a very long time span for which I can account for every occupant of this address. I've also been the one who checked the mail for most of the time I lived here, so I'm well acquainted with what our mail usually looks like.
In the last 3 months or so, we've started getting mail for other people -- credit card bills for one guy, and random mail for another, and now, today, a letter for a third from an employment center. The letters are for completely different sounding names. The credit card bills are for Bruce Campbell, while today's was for Ibrahim something or other, and the random pieces of mail have a Japanese last name and a first initial. Legitimate seeming mail, the kind where address errors would be unusual. No packages.
So is there some kind of potential scam or identity theft happening here? What might it be?
I've been returning the letters to sender with 'no person here by that name' written on the front of them. Is there something else I should be doing? Or worrying about?
(This is in Canada, in case postal system is somehow relevant.)
Response by poster: My street really only has houses on it -- no apartment buildings or anything of the sort. There are no other roads by the same name but different abbreviation in the city.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:58 PM on November 29, 2010
posted by jacquilynne at 7:58 PM on November 29, 2010
(I am in the U.S.) Earlier this year, I started occasionally getting some random, real-looking mail at my house addressed to someone who is not me. (This was weird for the additional reason that almost all of my actual mail goes to a PO box and not my house.) Then, I started getting notices from my car insurance company, saying "We have been informed that there may be another driver living at your address by the name of [the person I was getting mail for], please fill out this form so we can add them to your insurance," which freaked me out and I had to tell them no, nobody by that name lives here, I have no idea who that is, big mistake, etc.
I was doing what you're doing, sending back the mail with a big "NOT AT THIS ADDRESS" written across the front, but I still had concerns that someone was either trying to pull some identity theft thing, or trying to establish residency in my city or county for some reason (I live on a borderish town along county lines and there are all sorts of reasons one might need to have a Thiscounty address as opposed to a Thatcounty address).
Other than continuing what you're doing with sending the mail back, I don't know that there's anything else you can do other than possibly notify the Post Office about you concerns, and keep an eye on your other bills and such so that you don't suddenly have Bruce Campbell on your car insurance. You know he would drive your premiums straight through the roof.
posted by Gator at 8:07 PM on November 29, 2010 [1 favorite]
I was doing what you're doing, sending back the mail with a big "NOT AT THIS ADDRESS" written across the front, but I still had concerns that someone was either trying to pull some identity theft thing, or trying to establish residency in my city or county for some reason (I live on a borderish town along county lines and there are all sorts of reasons one might need to have a Thiscounty address as opposed to a Thatcounty address).
Other than continuing what you're doing with sending the mail back, I don't know that there's anything else you can do other than possibly notify the Post Office about you concerns, and keep an eye on your other bills and such so that you don't suddenly have Bruce Campbell on your car insurance. You know he would drive your premiums straight through the roof.
posted by Gator at 8:07 PM on November 29, 2010 [1 favorite]
I wonder if this is a seasonal thing. We would occasionally get one or two pieces like that, mostly from people that I assumed lived here prior to us. Over the past couple of weeks there has definitely been an influx to random people I've never heard of...
posted by Elminster24 at 11:11 PM on November 29, 2010
posted by Elminster24 at 11:11 PM on November 29, 2010
Possibility: Canadian postal codes can be specific to a town, group of houses, a block, or as small of a group as one building. Pay close attention to the last three characters of the postal code and compare it to the address. Watch for a mismatch. That would indicate someone, somewhere (probably nearby) put down the wrong postal code.
Anecdata: My parents have lived in the same house for 25 years. My grandparents lived there before that for 25 years. My parents still get mail from the previous owners, who are deceased. Most of it still comes to the obsolete Rural Route address which they stopped using 30-40 years ago. It never ends.
Keep putting RETURN on the misaddressed mail. Eventually it will slow down, but never stop. If you are concerned about some sort of scam with your identity, check your credit report.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 12:10 AM on November 30, 2010 [1 favorite]
Anecdata: My parents have lived in the same house for 25 years. My grandparents lived there before that for 25 years. My parents still get mail from the previous owners, who are deceased. Most of it still comes to the obsolete Rural Route address which they stopped using 30-40 years ago. It never ends.
Keep putting RETURN on the misaddressed mail. Eventually it will slow down, but never stop. If you are concerned about some sort of scam with your identity, check your credit report.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 12:10 AM on November 30, 2010 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Both the postal code and the address have been ours. We do occasionally get mail that simply doesn't belong to us and doesn't carry our address at all, or carries only parts of it, but in this case, it's all "correctly" addressed to our house. Our postal code covers 8 houses -- the ones on our side of the street between two adjacent intersections.
It sounds like this isn't anything to be overly concerned about, just some random weirdness, so I guess I'll just keep returning the mail to sender.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:07 AM on November 30, 2010
It sounds like this isn't anything to be overly concerned about, just some random weirdness, so I guess I'll just keep returning the mail to sender.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:07 AM on November 30, 2010
A couple of years ago, my email addy was attached to a number of fraudulent website signups. From what we could tell, they'd been made for someone's referral fee. They grabbed one person's name, another person's address, my email addy, and a credit card number. (I informed all of the sites that the signups were fraudulent and we thought they had a crooked referrer, but I still got all kinds of "we're so sad to see you go" messages. Idiots. Apparently they had no procedure for "this person DID NOT SIGN UP and is ANGRY WITH US.")
So if you've suddenly got a noticeable amount of mail coming to you, with different names but all with your address, I wonder if something similar might be going on. Perhaps not the same kind of scam, but something else where they grabbed someone else's name and your address for some reason.
posted by galadriel at 8:47 AM on November 30, 2010
So if you've suddenly got a noticeable amount of mail coming to you, with different names but all with your address, I wonder if something similar might be going on. Perhaps not the same kind of scam, but something else where they grabbed someone else's name and your address for some reason.
posted by galadriel at 8:47 AM on November 30, 2010
In addition to alerting your post office, you might also leave a note in the mailbox itself for your postal carrier. I did this when my mail was being misdirected, and the problem went away immediately (I also left a small "thank-you" cookie bribe). It depends on who is actually in charge of sorting the mail - in my county in Texas, the postal carriers do it.
posted by backwards compatible at 11:41 AM on November 30, 2010
posted by backwards compatible at 11:41 AM on November 30, 2010
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If this could easily be explained by people moving into an existing building at a very similar address (transposed numbers, N instead of S, Ave instead of St, etc), I see absolutely no reason for concern.
Marking them return to sender and dropping them in the box is an OK step. But the correct thing to do if you really want to stop getting other people's mail (at least for me, I'm in the US) is to take any incorrectly addressed mail you get to the post office and actually say (physically, in person), "the person this letter is addressed to does not live here, I do," and show them your ID so they can confirm your address. That stopped me from getting the misdirected mail from every person who had lived in my apartment before me.
I vote for simple accident. It's not the procedure for any scam that I know of.
posted by phunniemee at 7:48 PM on November 29, 2010 [1 favorite]