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Comment by NegativeK | Hacker News Reader

Due to the prevalence of porch pirates, people compromised.

I refuse to have cloud connected cameras, but I understand why my neighbors have made the choices they have.

Speaking of porch pirates, what are you going to do when a porch pirate strikes your house? Take down their license plate? Call the police?

I'm cynical, but I imagine it goes like this:

"Hello, this is 911, how can we help you?"

"I'd like to report a 39.99 board game stolen off my porch, license plate ZXX-1234"

"Sir, this line is for emergencies. Have you filed a claim with Amazon?"

Porch cameras drive mass paranoia. If you're not prepared to act on the information yourself, you're just feeding your own fear.

You post the image to Nextdoor and everyone comments on the decline of western civilization and moves on with their days.

An Amazon driver left a parcel for me and didn't ring the bell, then a few minutes later someone stole it. I ran outside, chased them down and took it back.

The police took the report, but obviously they weren't interested in coming out to take the details of the thief or help me recover the package.

The doorbells also notify you of packages that have been left outside and let you answer the door remotely, which are both useful even if you can't go Blade Runner.

There is a non 911 phone number for contacting local police if not in an emergency.

True, but they're still not going to do anything about your stolen package. You could have video evidence and a license plate. Doesn't matter.

A thief like that doesn't steal just one package. Multiple thefts like that can easily add up to a felony amount. This is why the theft still should be reported. The cops won't look for that package specifically, but they could bust that thief for something else.

Not always true.

Our package got nabbed, a person noticed the empty box tossed on a nearby street and called the cops. Cops got video from a near by house an image of a unique car; month later they saw the car, arrested him.

He paid for the package and got community service.

Clearly the porch pirate problem is best solved by the delivery people not leaving stuff on porches. This does not happen in other countries.

What do the delivery people do instead?

You get an email, SMS (“text message” for non-Europeans), or a paper in your (physical) mailbox informing you that you have a package waiting at such-and-such a place (within walking distance if in a city), or there’s a reference to how you can choose your pickup spot from a handful of options.

That's an option in the US, but going to Walgreens to pick up every package is a much bigger hassle than just opening your door. In very high-crime areas, that's what people do (or get their own lockbox), but in most places in the US trying to prevent the crime is still more popular than trying to avoid it.

In a city, porch piracy is a non-issue if you live in an apartment building with a lobby. You can open the door to the lobby remotely.

I wonder if a remotely openable porch-side "mail box" would find a market.

Leave it with a neighbour, attempt redelivery the next day, let you collect it from a delivery office, hide it in a less obvious safe place.

Usually they give you the choice of what to do.

Though having said that, I live in the UK and do occasionally just get parcels left on my very public doorstep. It's the exception though.

Where I live you had to be home to receive packages. If you weren't, you had to go to a distribution centre to collect them. During the pandemic it seemed to change, so now they just leave them at your front door, and it hasn't gone back.

Porch pirates and various vandals.

Of course, Rings are essentially worthless for vehicle identification. You would need LPC (License Plate Capture) cameras set up in two directions just for that. They aren't even particularly good for facial identification.

Really, if you wanted something actionable, you would do what I had seen someone else done, which was capture plates and have the right cameras and ... as the secret sauce, an IMEI catcher, filtering out the usuals and highlighting who just blasted past.

If it is one of the Kia Boys around here, they just get out and re-offend.

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