Informed Delivery

[micky]

Informed Delivery sent me an email today with pictures of 6 pieces of mail. I thought it had a limit of 3, and sometimes it would say there were more at the dashboard, but there were never more for that day. I think they meant the previous 5 mail delivery days, which you can look at also on the web.

And it is good because a few days ago I saw the speed camera ticket in an email, so I could look for it among all the junk mail.

This service costs the governmet, I think, next to nothing, because the sorting machines already take pictures of the mail while sorting. So that just leaves writing one or two software programs and the cost of email.

And btw Arlen, even before there was politics here, posts like this were welcome.

[trader_4]

Well, bully for you. What are you having for lunch today?

[gfretwell]

The Informed Delivery infrastructure certainly makes it a lot easier for the cops to run a warrantless "mail cover" on you, collecting an image of both sides of every piece of mail you get. I guess if you never do anything illegal, so what but they can build a pretty good profile on you without any sort of probable cause. Sleep tight, Big Brother is your friend. ;-)

[angelica...]

I'm a little fuzzy on what the cops can get out of my junk mail. How useful are newsletters for school districts that I'm not even in?

Google and Amazon have much better profiles on me than the cops could ever get from my mail. I don't see why the government doing it is any worse than commercial data miners.

Cindy Hamilton

[rbowman]

Yeah, my subscription to the Thunderbolt ran out decades ago... If they want glossy campaign crap, I've got a ton. I've been using them for air pistol targets in a completely non-partisan fashion.

[angelica...]

I thought that's what squirrels were for.

Cindy Hamilton

[trader_4]

I agree. Unless you're running a mail fraud operation out of your home mailbox or receiving illegal drug deliveries there, I think it has little value in proving crimes.

[rbowman]

Very few squirrels around here; they stay in the city and collect welfare. Seriously, the only hardwoods are cottonwood and a few aspen. The little pine squirrels can survive on p. pine and Douglas fir cones but the grays and foxes don't have a taste for them.

I see a grey every few years and I don't begrudge him some sunflower seeds since they don't last long between the coyotes and eagles.

There are Columbia ground squirrels but they won't wake up until May.

[gfretwell]

It must have some value or the FBI would not use "mail covers" on people they investigate. I understand for a lot of people printed communication is a thing of the past but there are still plenty of people who use the mail. (you folks were telling us about it when "Trump slowed down the mail"). They will be looking at the magazines you read, the groups that send you newsletters, packages you receive and the source of letters you get. If your return address is on your mail, they get who you are sending mail to.

[gfretwell]

It is not really solving crimes, it is just identifying suspects that they then can investigate further. These days I suspect that if you are receiving 80% lowers in the mail, people at ATF might start looking at you a lot closer. If you added a few newsletters from radical groups and perhaps some correspondence with a chemical company, I would expect to see that plain white Crown Vic cruising by your house frequently and people snatching your trash. Some things are different. These days you don't see Agent Youngblood climbing a pole in front of your house to tap your phone. It is done with a few key strokes on a computer and you don't have anything detectable on your line.

It is pretty much the same thing if they are sniffing packets from your IP address for you digital only people. They can also sniff based on the MAC address of your PC in case you always use a hot spot away from the house.

It all depends on who is looking at you and how hard they want to look.

[angelica...]

No magazines, no newsletters. Packages mainly from Amazon and one or two women's clothing online stores. No letters. Some stuff from the Social Security Administration. Junk mail.

The could tap our phones and get the same boring results. Nothing to see here. We don't even send out for pizza.

Even our e-mail is dull, dull, dull. And e-mail is how we get most of our bills.

Cindy Hamilton

[gfretwell]

I am over run by Gray Squirrels. I live in the land of live oaks. It is a native tree that is basically a weed and developers plant them by the thousands to fill their quota of approved landscape varieties. The squirrels assure you of a yard full of baby oak trees when they spread the acorns around. I kill hundreds of saplings with my lawn mower when I start the ritual summer mowing. There are 4 huge trees here that came up wild and escaped the mower.

[gfretwell]

I don't have anything to hide either. That is why I post with my real name. Come and get me copper. We can have a beer and talk about what a waste of time this investigation was.

[rbowman]

About the only person I talk to is my ex. I try not to get her fired up about Cuomo, DeBlasio, and so forth. She said one of her friends dropped her because of her politics and religion so I steer clear.

Otherwise it's the assholes telling me the warranty on the car I bought in March is expiring.

[gfretwell]

They keep telling me the warranty on my 97 Honda is expiring soon.

[angelica...]

Ah, those assholes. I don't have the patience to ask what kind of warranty they might give me on my 2004 Highlander. Or my husband's 2008 FJ Cruiser.

Cindy Hamilton

[Dan Espen]

I once kept them on the phone as long as I could just to waste their time.

For my 2006 Scion XB they wanted $450/year. I tried to talk them down but they insisted.

That $450 would be about $430 more than I've spent on repairs since I bought it in 2006. I once had to buy a $20 part.

Now I've adopted a new tactic for telemarketers. I have Nomorobo which blocks about 80% of the calls. For the rest, I pick up and don't say anything. If it's a human they'll eventually start talking. If it's a machine it eventually hangs up. I've noticed the number of calls I get seems to be dropping off. The big payoff is when I don't hear which scam it is, I don't get as mad.

[rbowman]

They might have a good deal for my '86 F150....

[Tekkie©]

On Thu, 21 Jan 2021 08:09:03 -0500, Dan Espen posted for all of us to digest...

Hmm, that is a novel approach I haven't tried. Thanks, I'm always ready to steal a good idea.

[Wade Garrett]

The thing I've always wondered about is what kind of pinhead would do business with one of these calling companies when their first contact with you makes them a lawbreaker...