WSMV Channel 4 Digital requests to hold mail can tip off criminals

Digital requests to hold mail can tip off criminals

An overflowing mailbox can be a dead giveaway to criminals that no one is home. But when you try to stop your mail when you're away from home, you might still be sending out a signal to hackers.

You may know it's not a good idea to let your mail stack up while you are out of town, but what if the act of holding delivery of your mail at the post office also exposes you unexpectedly?

There are three ways to hold your mail delivery when you are on vacation. You can go into the post office and fill out a card, you can hand-write a note and put it in your mailbox, or, most convenient of all, you can go online and tell the post office exactly when you're going to be out of town.

"When you fill that online, you're putting the date you want your mail to be held, until the date that you want it to be placed in your box again," said Kathleen Calligan, with the Better Business Bureau. "So you're giving con artists, thieves, home invaders a great window when, guess what, you are not at home."

In fact, that happened recently to a west Nashville woman who was out of the country. She stopped her mail on the U.S. Postal Service website but was soon contacted by a hacker who wanted more information.

The woman looked at the email and saw some problems. It looked like the similar to the Postal Service website, but there were typos and they were asking for information that really had nothing to do with her hold mail request.

The woman who brought this case to our attention did not want to appear in this report, but she did bring her fake email to the Belle Meade post office. A worker there told her, unfortunately, they get these often.

"It could be just plain old identity thieves that found the best link to break into and they found a great list of names and addresses," Calligan said.

The U.S. Postal Service did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

The Better Business Bureau tells Channel 4 the solution to this problem is an old-fashioned one.

Fill out the form and turn it in, in person. It may not be as convenient, but they say it is a lot safer.

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