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Comment by jjp | Hacker News Reader

Headline whilst HN correct is misleading.

TLDR - fraudster orders good, returns empty box with tracking, tracking label is photoshopped to different property in post code. Fraudster knows that tracking only records post code not property within post code. eBay issue refund.

Problem is granularity of tracking nothing to do with post code loophole.

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Ebay would issue the refund even if the fraudster didn't photoshop the tracking label.

Is the granularity of the tracking really the problem? I believe fraud is the problem, and it's an impossible one to solve.

The issue is Royal Mail being negligent.

Even for proofs of postage sometimes (always?) the certificate only lists the recipient's postcode instead of the name and full address.

That may be true, but Royal Mail does not play a significant part in this fraud. There's nothing Royal Mail could do to stop this fraud.

Having correct tracking and proofs of postage, and potentially coherency checks between written address and barcode, would make it much more difficult to impossible.

Nope, that'll do nothing at all. This scam works just fine even if the fraudster does not tamper with the label and the seller receives an empty box.

The empty box scam is one scam, all the abuse that is possible because of Royal Mail's negligence is another.

At least if the seller is the one receiving an empty box he can set up procedures to attempt to prove it.

What abuse is that? The example in the article is the empty box scam.

>At least if the seller is the one receiving an empty box he could set up procedures to attempt to prove it.

I definitely agree that would be a better outcome, but I think it is a stretch to blame royal mail for this. If someone really wants their package to get lost in shipping there's not much you can do about it.

Receiving empty box gives you evidence to submit for Police investigation. Much easier to prosecute than "system said I receive package".

I was curious how much coherency would help, thinking perhaps it's just the postcode that goes in the barcode too.

Apparently they also use a field "Delivery Point Suffix"

"A postcode is not always sufficient to uniquely identify each delivery point in the UK – for example, in shared buildings.

Some postcodes relate to only one delivery point, while others may cover up to a hundred. The average is 15.

For that reason a Delivery Point Suffix (DPS) has been developed. The DPS is a two character code (a number and a letter) which enables each delivery point to be identified.

The DPS can be created by extracting the postcode together with the house number or name using Royal Mail Postcode Address File (PAF)."

A postcode never refers to a single delivery point (i.e. address), except in some specific, rare cases.

It's not at all rare. Any building that gets a large amount of post is likely to have its own postcode.

So it's rare and specific. It's certainly not the standard case as suggested by the quote I commented on.

You are correct that Proof of Postage only records the postcode, which can only be obtained at the the Post Office (for free), when handing over the letter/parcel at the counter. However, you can insist upon the address or the property number to be recorded ─ which requires a 'Certificate of Posting', which needs to be filled in and stamped. You can have one or the other, not both. This absolves RM of any negligence albeit they could clarify this distinction.

Since, this particular scam is originating from a very specific ecosystem; in this case, the responsibility ultimately lies with eBay and to a certain extent with PayPal ─ who are blasé about these scams and have zero intent on solving these issues, they are even happy to front-load the system, so it favours certain types of scammers.

https://business.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/...

If anything your reply makes RM look even worse... Also the issue seems to also lie with tracking, not just with proof of postage (or whatever exists solely for the purpose of confusing customers who are never made aware of these 2 options)

Ebay would refund the seller even if the fraudster shipped back just an empty box to the correct address. They don't give a single fuck.

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