Hacker News Reader

Comment by acchow | Hacker News Reader

You can also go to usps.com and declare someone has moved and have all their mail sent to somewhere else (probably don't pick your own address if you don't want to get caught).

View on HN

The deterrent against this is serious prison time. That's mail fraud, a federal crime that could hypothetically get you 20 years in prison. Standard sentencing guidelines mean you would almost certainly not get that 20 years, but it's still not the sort of crime you'd commit casually.

I don't know about the USPS's implementation, but the UK's Royal Mail not only collects ID for this service, but sends an unredirectable letter to your old address saying 'we're starting a redirect, contact us if this is odd'. So it is possible to do sanely. Like Facebook, I suppose - require a scanned death certificate?

USPS sends the same letter and requires you to answer several questions before doing it

No they don't. My roommate moved out a few months ago, I watched him fill out the mail forwarding form (with his name and my/our address). Not only did no confirmation letter show up in my mailbox -- in fact I stopped getting my own mail for several days and when I confronted the USPS worker, he said, "Oh, I thought your apartment was vacant now." I got pretty mad and he just shrugged, not even an apology.

I had to get my car's title reissued from the DMV (I had just bought it off my roommate as he was leaving), and also had a paycheck disappear (was working 1099 remotely and paid monthly via check) because both things were coming in the mail that week and disappeared never to be seen again. (Luckily the guy I was subcontracting from paid for his own stop payment and reissued the check)

Yeah, when I moved a few years ago I also got no confirmation. So after the move, I sent a letter to my old address, with no return address, to see if it got redirected.

(Although my letter did, I'm pretty sure my first Ventra card was lost in the mail anyway. With the insanity of the switch it got delayed a couple months, and ended up getting sent out right about when I moved)

Or you can just send an email asking if user is still alive.

Last time I did this, the "we're starting a redirect, contact us if this is odd" letter was sent after the redirect started, and it was helpfully redirected to the new address!

Seamless!

The USPS sends two - one to your old address and one to your new address. The one sent to your old address does indicate that they’re redirecting - that is, it is sent after the fact, it is not asking for confirmation or providing a grace period before they do - but it is marked clearly as something that should not be forwarded.

I suppose it could have been forwarded by accident (at scale screw ups do happen), but perhaps you confused one with the other?

>Like Facebook, I suppose - require a scanned death certificate?

This whole discussion is completely absurd.

What went so wrong that we want to send our government IDs and death certificates to one of the companies with worse records with respect to their users' data?

The real solution is to stop using Facebook.

Amen to that. Monetization of friendships (and "friendships") is evil.

But beyond any of that, the idea that a Facebook account needs to correlate to real world consequences, and real world facts is beyond stupid.

I can buy ten phones, create ten free email addresses, and create ten facebook accounts, tonight, and no one can stop me, or challenge what I've done, as long as it's not invasive and obnoxious to other users.

Nor should it be possible to draw reproach for doing such a thing. There are real reasons for users to want to create dummy accounts like that, and as usual, there's no reason 99 people need to suffer because one asshole has to misbehave.

Facebook, as a walled garden, is fated to forever lack practical utility. It's like a rain gutter that empties into a sewage facility you can never see inside. If you know that you can crack open a mercury thermometer and dump it into the drain, don't drink the lemonade they're selling outside the front gate, unless you can prove it's not contaminated by your thermometer disposal activities.

The USPS also sends a notification to the old address.

Change-of-address scam moved UPS corporate headquarters to tiny Rogers Park apartment, feds say

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-ups...

They require a credit/debit card that they charge a $1 to. That cards billing address must be either the old address or the new address. So yea, its easy, but it's not that easy.

Though now that I think about it i wonder if you could use those visa giftcards that let you edit your address. Maybe it is indeed that easy.

USPS requires the credit/debit card charge if you fill out the form online. IIRC, they charge nothing if you do it in person, but you may be required to show ID.

Nope. Fill out form, hand in (or IIRC, drop in any mail box). They may glance to make sure you signed it, but nothing more.

Maybe enough to skip through the automated checks, maybe not. I suppose it depends on whether it's being done through an ID verification service or just a payment processor putting a hold on the card.

The gift card number wouldn't be visible to the ID verification services as a credit or deposit account, and that'll certainly knock points off in their scoring system.

I suspect it would just shift the point where someone eventually notices either way.

Anyone can change their credit card billing address to anything they want.

That does leave a paper trail for the postal inspector looking for a collar.

You correct a $1 preauthorization without capture occurs that veirfy AVS part of Zip code and disappeares from yiur account within 48 hours. So only Zip code of new/old card is required at the office, unless you do it online then whole address is being verified.

Usps system recognizes gift cards and do not allow those, so is majority of online services for example Digital Ocean (due to using their boxes for spam)

AVS can check the numeric part of the address as well as the zip code.

As I understand it, though, this would still green-light "1234 Sixth Street" for "1234 Wilson Avenue." I also suspect it's less than bulletproof on some weird format addresses

Yes, the Visa gift cards work, at least as of a few years ago. Most of them will let you change the "billing zip code" online as often as you like, or simply always return success on Address Verification System (AVS) queries.

Most stores don't routinely keep surveillance footage around very long, though I have suspicions about Target.

Don't pick UPS's HQ address either, they're probably going to notice...

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/10/610102872...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com