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Monday, November 12, 2018

ID thieves are exploiting mail-scanning service, Secret Service warns

The U.S. Postal Service’s Informed Delivery service is cool. The free service sends users an email every morning with photos of the mail they can expect in the day’s delivery. It’s a convenient option for anyone anxiously awaiting the arrival of their Orphan Annie Secret Society decoder pin (or just too lazy to trudge to the mailbox every day). More than 6 million people have signed up for Informed Delivery, but they may rethink the decision after a recent warning from the U.S. Secret Service.

Tech watchdog Krebs on Security reports that the U.S. Secret Service sent an internal alert on November 6 warning that scammers are using the Informed Delivery feature “to identify and intercept mail, and to further their identity theft fraud schemes.” They also want to use the service to “surveil potential identity theft victims” on criminal forums, Krebs reports.

The alert was sent in the wake of a Michigan bust, where seven people were arrested for allegedly stealing credit cards from mailboxes and racking up $400,000 in charges after signing up as those victims at the USPS website.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Typical for USPS. Another idiotic idea not having enough common sense to think of the negatives. It wasn't bad enough they gave out ALL 800,000 of their employees info from data breaches now their jeopardize the public