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Comment by shellfishgene | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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