The US Postal Service (USPS) has an interesting service called Informed Delivery that allows you to see what pieces of mail are heading to your mailbox before they arrive. You can use it to see what mail you should have received, as well – if you were expecting something but didn’t get it. When you log in, you can see black and white scans of each item, including packages. That’s handy.
However, if you don’t sign up, it’s possible for bad guys to sign up on your behalf. Why would they want to do that? If they live physically near you, they could sign up for credit cards in your name and intercept the card from your mailbox. Or they might steal credit card offers from your mailbox and try to use them to sign up for a card, and then steal that when it arrives. It might sound far-fetched, but a single group of scammers in Michigan managed to rack up over $400,000 in charges using this technique.
The answer is to sign up for the service yourself which you can do here. Note that every person in your household is eligible, so you would need to do this for each person.
Supposedly a credit freeze will prevent bad guys from signing up in your name by asking you security questions. However, I wouldn’t count on that. Also, if you have a credit freeze, that should also prevent credit from being issued in your name. Nevertheless, I would go ahead and create your Informed Delivery account.
Need practical security tips?
Sign up to receive Carey's favorite security tips + the first chapter of his book, Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons.
Don't get caught with your drawbridge down!
