While getting the mail from my street-side mailbox today, it suddenly struck me that nobody ever steals my mail - I even live a few hundred yards from a junior high school packed with hoodlums, yet all items important or otherwise that I've expected in the mail over the course of 4 years in this same house have arrived.
My parents, come to think of it, have a mailbox that is literally closer to their neighbor's house than to their own - at least 30 feet away from any window, and it would be shockingly easy to walk up to the mailbox and steal whatever's inside without even the fear of someone seeing you through any window.
And yet, all the years I lived there I never missed any mail, and my parents have never mentioned an instance of theft occurring.
Does this make sense? I know our streets are not simply brimming with thieves, but there are mischievous kids and other hoodlums of all sorts, and the mailbox is a potential goldmine for identity thieves (which are supposedly hugely prevalent), nosey neighbors, bored and curious teenagers, data miners and fans ofNetflix DVDs.
So why is it that mail is rarely stolen?
The answer was provided by today's - and for that matter, pretty much every other day's mail offering: a giant bundle of local advertisements, coupons and credit card offers.
Here's the idea: The existence of this junk mail, the advertisements, free classifieds, credit card offers and other envelope-sized "fake" mail all act as a diluting tool. In other words, because there are so many days when the mail is a pile of useless crap, thieves would have to take the risk of stealing mail over multiple days with a low probability of getting valuable mail. They'd have to keep trying, day after day, and keep grabbing piles of paper and envelopes out of mailboxes until the DVDs or the Social Security checks show up.
I think it's logical, therefore, to conclude that the payoff from being an identify thief or a nosey neighbor, or even a mail-DVD thief, is not sufficient to cover the additional risk of multiple days worth of mail thievery. If you think about it, this make sense: Really, How many days per month do you actually get "valuable" mail?
The answer is 4.
There is one question, though: Can't the argument be made that, since mailboxes are closed boxes, thieves would have to make multiple return trips to get valuable mail regardless of whether or not there is junk mail in there?
...And my answer is no. Closed mailboxes stop blatant theft, but it would be very easy for a thief to walk by every day, open up the little door, glance into the mailbox and continue walking if he doesn't see anything. If the thief had to - every single time he comes by - actually pull out piles of paper and envelopes and try to pocket them just to have a shot at getting that rare piece of valuable mail, he'd be taking on substantially more risk.
So, if it weren't for junk mail, you'd probably not be able to safely receive real mail...
Isn't that nice of the people at American Express, Chase, "The Shopper," Cox Cable and Quest to subsidize our street-side mailbox security?
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Junk Mail as Theft Deterrent
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7 comments:
i never thought about it that way, but your take on it is fantastic. doesn't matter to me, though, as i have one of those communal mailboxes with the locked door on it. but i do see your point
How did they steal identities before the internet? Just old fashioned murder and document forgery?
Nobody needs to rifle through actual mail anymore to steal anything, all they need to do is sit in the privacy of their own homes and do it on the computer. It's sad, but real mail is most likely going to become obsolete in the near future. Along with Pay phones and phonebooks.
And, maybe you have been the victim of mail theft and you weren't aware of it because you didn't know you were getting that particular piece of mail in the first place.
Burgess -
Interesting backup for your statement about real mail becoming obsolete:
The post office recently released "forever stamps" that will work no matter the current price of other stamps. So, of course people think they're clever if they start stockpiling these stamps now. The real trick, though, is that it's a sign that the post office expects a decline in demand for postage - so I'd assume there's some sort of critical mass that the mail will reduce to that'll cause us all to switch our remaining demand to FedEx or UPS at some point in the future... Funny thing, though, is that if we knew the number of "forever stamps" the post office projected to sell, we'd get a good indication of when the post office might fail...
And regarding your second comment:
It's not a matter of whether I'm always aware when "valuable" mail is sent to me (I'd argue that I am, actually - considering the nature of the mail), but rather it's a frequency issue. In a general sense, getting less valuable mail makes it harder for your mail to get stolen - mostly because of the number of days a thief has to come back to open the little mail door... It's like a slot machine: If you decrease the number of 7s, your odds of getting a jackpot go down. If you add junk mail to the mix, it makes it almost impossible to repeat the "mail-door opening" technique enough to get a good piece of mail.
So, yes, it's possible that I've been a mail theft victim, but I'd say the odds of that theft occurring with valuable mail are almost zero - and that goes for just about everyone else, too. Except for old people.
And for the record, dear readers:
The trick, supposedly, is that identify theft occurs because people steal your credit card offers. Search Google for Junk Mail Theft and you'll see a big ordeal about it... I'd say this is not as much of a disagreement with my post as it seems - I'd argue that what these websites are forgetting is that the majority of your identity has already been stolen by the time they open up a false credit card account - The junk mail is just the last step in a targeted campaign, and I think its reasonable to assume that you're already screwed by the time an identity thief gets around to stealing a piece of paper that asks for all your personal information... (the credit card offer).
And that's assuming the new credit card is mailed to "the new address, wink wink" - unless they plan on stealing every subsequent day's mail...
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Josh: Thanks chief - and I'll see you on Saturday... Provided Darrell survived last weekend. (I haven't talked to him and he might have died from a hangover).
Zane: Ever see that documentary/movie called Face-Off? I believe that's how they did it. Heh heh heh...
Dave - a call to the card agency can change the billing address.
Also - I'm sure that USPS is anticipating a loss in envelope mail, but, I think that's why they are concentrating on parcel shipping more and more. Allowing Fed-Ex/UPS/DHL/etc to get into the mix might eventually be the demise of the USPS. Thus, I think that the forever postage (unless it also applies to packages, which I don't believe it does) might not be the strongest gauge for your theory.
oh, picky picky picky...
You can't change the billing address until you've actually received & activated the card. However, none of this is really the point - the more important idea is that if someone wants to steal your identity that can, probably pretty easily (as Burgess suggested).
Second, agreed: I didn't actually mean the USPS would completely disappear, I just mean that they're signaling an end to [more] profitable postage.
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