2
SEPARATE YOUR NAME FROM YOUR HOME ADDRESS
Consider the case of George Joseph Cvek, as presented in the book Diary of a D.A. by Martin M. Frank, formerly an assistant district attorney in the Bronx. Frank writes:
When the doorbell rang on that January afternoon, a young housewife opened her apartment door to find a slim, ordinary-looking man of about twenty-eight standing at the threshold. He was a stranger to her.
“Are you Mrs. Allen?” he asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“Is your husband home?”
“No,” she replied, “he isn’t here now.”
“Gee, I’m sorry,” he said. “I know him from Norwalk, Connecticut. I thought this was his early day. Maybe I’ll come back tonight.” He seemed rather well acquainted with her husband, a route salesman in Connecticut for a bakery company.
The caller half-turned to go, then stopped and apologetically asked, “Could I have a drink of water?”
Sure,” she said, “wait here a second.” Leaving him at the door, Mrs. Allen went into the kitchen. When she returned, she found that he had walked through the foyer into the living room and was seated on the sofa.…
The caller continued to deceive Mrs. Allen and then suddenly struck her down and prepared to rape her. At that moment, the telephone rang. He jumped up and ran from the apartment, slamming the door behind him. But in the years to come, more than 200 women were not so fortunate. Their telephones did not ring. In each case, the caller gained entrance by telling the wife he knew her husband, and after gaining entrance through subterfuge, he raped and killed her, then burglarized the home.
In each case it was the husbands themselves who had unwittingly made the crime possible. They had picked up a neatly dressed hitchhiker—George Joseph Cvek—who said he was from Boys Town, Nebraska, and given him a ride. When Cvek was dropped off, he asked the drivers for their home address so he could show his appreciation for the ride by mailing him a small gift. At that instant, each husband sealed his wife’s death warrant.
Note: More than half the people who come to me for help are at the time receiving both mail and packages at their home address. In my opinion, this is an incredible error, a matter of life and death.
An extreme viewpoint? Mike Ketcher of Burnsville, Minnesota, editor of The Financial Privacy Report, certainly doesn’t think so. He hired Yon Son Moon, a divorced woman, to work in his office. Yon Son’s ex-husband, Jae Choe, had been harassing her for years. When Mike hired Yon Son, Choe was furious. Eventually he went on a rampage, shooting Yon Son, their fourteen-year-old son John, and two policemen, after which he killed himself. The publisher of the newsletter, Daniel Rosenthal, sums up the two important lessons learned, as follows:
First, if you think the police are there to protect you, let me tell you differently. Yon Son had a restraining order against Choe. So did we, at our home and our office. But the police ignored our repeated requests to enforce these restraining orders, despite Choe’s continual violations and threats. On several occasions they literally laughed at our requests for enforcement.
Second, when the police don’t work, privacy DOES work. The only person in our company that was truly safe was Mike Ketcher. He was safe because he kept his personal affairs so private that Mr. Choe couldn’t find him.
Hiding your home address is not easy, but it’s doable, one step at a time. The first step is to immediately stop sending and receiving mail at your home address.
MAIL THEFT
A Seattle newspaper runs a “Rant & Rave” section each Sunday. Readers can call in during the week with whatever they wish to praise or condemn. Here’s one of them:
A big rant to the felon who stole our outgoing U.S. mail, forcing several people to close bank accounts and depriving friends and relatives of holiday greetings and children and grandchildren of their Christmas checks.
Does anything about this rant sound a little strange to you? What if the reader’s message had started out like this?
A big rant to the person who saw us park our car on the street, loaded with Christmas packages, and walk away. Although we did leave the doors open and the key in the ignition, he had no right to get in and drive away.…
When you walk out to the curb, place your mail in the box, and raise the red flag, your mail is as vulnerable to theft as your car would be if you left the key in it and the doors open.
Every day more than 100,000 residential mailboxes in the United States are burglarized. This applies to mail being received both in the city and in the country, both in private homes and in apartment complexes. In Hammond, Indiana, before they were finally arrested, two men and a woman went from door to door but did not knock or ring any bells. The neighbors saw nothing more suspicious than each person depositing an advertising brochure in each mailbox. What they didn’t see was the sleight of hand when the person traded the brochure for whatever mail was in the box.
More than a year prior to the rant about theft from a mailbox, the same Seattle newspaper had run a series of articles warning of mail theft not only from home mailboxes but from mail collection boxes on the street, plus the boxes used at thousands of apartments, condominiums, and commercial buildings in the Pacific Northwest. For months, thieves had been using counterfeit “arrow keys.” Each arrow key provides access to about 2,500 mail collection boxes, more than 10,000 apartments and condominiums, and virtually all office and commercial buildings in the region. (The keys give postal workers easy access to the mailboxes, making it easier for them to pick up and deliver messages and packages.)
Readers were urged to stop using outside mailboxes to deposit mail, including their own home mailboxes. Instead, they were to deposit mail only inside a post office. In addition to professional thieves, it was said that many others have been stealing mail: drug addicts, to support their habit; teenagers, looking for cash; petty thieves, looking for any number of things.
In the article, headlined “Theft of Mail a Problem at Our Doorstep,” U.S. Postal Inspector Jim Bordenet voiced mail security concerns.
“Thieves rifle outgoing mail for checks written to pay bills. They then alter the checks so they can cash them for large amounts.” He suggests people not put outgoing mail into their own boxes, and especially advises against using the red flag, which is a signal to thieves. “Thieves sometimes follow carriers around and steal incoming mail,” he said. “They’re typically looking for boxes of checks and credit-card offers.”
I will spare you the flurry of follow-up articles and letters to the editor that followed publication of the article just quoted. Some of the questions raised were:
• Why didn’t the Postal Service warn the public about such thefts years ago?
• Why was nothing said until the thefts were exposed by the local newspapers?
• Why—even now—is the problem not being solved?
Another article, this one from the McClatchy Newspapers, is datelined Sacramento, California, and titled “Post Office Fights Mailbox Theft.” It reports that hundreds of pieces of mail are stolen daily in the Sacramento area. In rural areas the criminals watch for raised red flags, the signal that outgoing mail is inside. Others pry open “cluster boxes” at apartment complexes or housing developments and steal everybody’s mail at the same time. In some cases they even pry open the standard blue U.S. mail collection boxes. The article quotes Tom Hall, a postal inspector who investigates mail theft from Sacramento to the Oregon border:
Today, thanks to chemicals and computers, thieves can use almost any kind of financial information to commit a variety of financial crimes. If you write a check to a utility and a bad guy gets it, he can “wash” the utility’s name off and make the check out to himself in a higher amount. With that one check, he can also make himself a whole new set of checks under your name.
Even worse, continues the article, “some criminals ‘assume’ the victim’s identity and apply for credit cards in the victim’s name.”
In an upscale neighborhood in Campbell, California, mail was being stolen on a regular basis. The thief was an elegant-appearing woman who dressed in expensive clothing so that she would not attract attention when she walked up to houses and stole the mail. Remember, all these thieves need is your name, address, account number, and credit information. They then get on the phone and order merchandise through catalogues.
If your home is vacant during the day, they may even have the products sent to your home. They’ll just park along your street and wait for FedEx or UPS to swing by. My advice, therefore, is to deposit all outgoing mail inside a local post office. You will thus protect your outgoing mail not only from random theft but from having it surreptitiously read. (Some Level Three PIs may “borrow” the mail from your home mailbox, read it, and return it the next day, apparently unopened.)
However, if dropping your mail off at a post office is not practical, perhaps you could drop it off at work. (Check first, of course, to see where that mail is dropped off.) Or, you might drop it in one of those big blue mailboxes at shopping centers and other public places. Even there, however, it is best to do it just before the listed pickup time.
If you are still in doubt about the dangers of mail theft, google “mail theft.” (Enclose the two words with quotation marks, as shown.) You’ll get about a quarter of a million sites to check out.
MAIL-FORWARDING APPLICATION
Do not check the little circle marked “Permanent.” If you do, your name will go into the Postal Service’s National Change of Address list and this list of persons who have moved is sold to the commercial mail-list folks and thus your name and new address will go into countless computers.
Instead, check the “Temporary” box and give a date when this is to end. At that point, notify the post office that you are closing the P.O. box and do not wish to have any mail forwarded. Mail will then be returned to sender.
TAKE THIS IMMEDIATE STEP TO PROTECT YOUR MAIL
If you are presently receiving mail at home, turn in a forwarding address. But where should this mail go? Certainly not to any permanent address you will use in the future. The following are some options:
1. If you presently have a PO box, choose that address.
2. Have it sent on to your place of business if you have one, or perhaps to a friend who is in business.
3. Rent a box at a commercial mail-receiving agency (CMRA).
4. Obtain a ghost address (of which more will be said later) in some faraway state or country and have the mail sent there.
ADDITIONAL FAMILY BENEFIT
When mail is received at home, a curious child may open a letter that has a bank statement, a notice from a creditor, bad news from a law firm, or whatever. Having your mail delivered elsewhere avoids this possibility.
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Because the secure sending and receiving of mail has become so complicated, the question-and-answer section that follows is one of the largest in this book. If you are in a hurry, however, jump to the next chapter. You can always come back.
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
What is a “mail cover”?
This is a system used by a number of governments to check your mail without a court order. Your mailman, or the clerk that “boxes” your mail will be instructed to note the return addresses and country of origin of your incoming mail. If you live a squeaky-clean life, you may say to yourself, imitating Mad magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman, “What? Me worry?” Read on:
Suppose you send mail to a person or company that is the subject of a mail cover? If you list your name and return address, you yourself could end up on a suspect list. There are at least two obvious solutions:
1. Copy the British—eliminate a return address.
2. Use some other return address, far, far away.
Recently, the postal authorities are getting more cautious, e.g., the current requirement of making you take any parcel weighing more than thirteen ounces to the counter, in person. For such parcels, they will insist you include a return address. The day may soon be here when a return address will be required on all letters as well.
I send out large volumes of mail, so I use a postage meter. Any danger there?
I don’t know how large a volume you refer to, but with one of my previous businesses, my wife and I used to mail 2,000 letters a week. We had a regular system, using self-adhesive stamps. First, we stuck one stamp on each of four fingers, then we put them on 4 envelopes, one, two, three, four, and repeat.
Why didn’t we use a postage meter? Because each postage meter has an identification number that ties it to a renter and to a specific location, that’s why.
Does it matter if—unsure of the exact postage—I put on more than enough stamps?
Judge for yourself. I know of a case in Missouri where a man put $38 postage on a small package that weighed less than two pounds. Destination, Los Angeles, but it didn’t arrive. In view of the excess postage, the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) was called in, and the package turned out to contain $10,000 in cash. Although I do not know if the source of the money was legal, I do know that the DEA “arrests” and keeps most confiscated cash, even though the owner may never be convicted of anything.
Actually, cash can be mailed most anywhere using many envelopes and small sums per envelope. With $38, the Missourian could have bought eighty-six first-class stamps. Had he then put just four $100 bills in each envelope, wrapping the money with a page or two from a magazine, he could have mailed out, not $10,000, but $34,400. And if mailed on different days from various post offices, and with a variety of fictitious return addresses, would anyone even have a clue?
This was not the first time I heard of incorrect postage alerting the authorities. One of the telltale signs postal inspectors look for, in the case of letter bombs, is excess postage. I use an unusually accurate electronic scale and double-check all outgoing mail.
At present, I receive a daily newspaper in my own name. It goes into its own box alongside my rural mailbox. Is there some way to at least continue to receive my daily paper, both at my present home, and at the new one when I move?
At one time we had a Canadian newspaper delivered directly to a holiday home under another name. No longer. Too many cases like the one cited in Carson City’s Nevada Appeal, headed, “Minden Teen Appears in Court, May Face 15 Charges.” The charges were that three teenagers burglarized houses in the Carson Valley while the occupants were away. And how did they know the occupants were away? From “information allegedly obtained through his job as a newspaper carrier.” Nevertheless, if you cannot live without your daily newspaper(s), then at least heed this advice:
• Cancel the newspaper you now receive. A month later, order a new subscription under another name. Avoid paying the newspaper carrier in person.
• When you leave on a trip, do not have the newspapers held. Get a friend or neighbor to pick them up. (Nevertheless, the best way is still to have the newspaper delivered to your ghost address.)
How secure is my incoming mail?
That depends on where it’s coming from, what it looks like, and who your enemies are. Under normal circumstances, I have far more confidence in regular mail (often referred to as snail mail) than in most electronic mail, because there is no possible way to scan the interiors of all letters in the U.S. postal system at any one time. Contrast this with electronic mail, which can be computer-searched at every junction along the way, red-flagging messages with any of hundreds or thousands of key words such as bomb, gas, gun, rifle, money, cash, or with any specific name including yours.
Note, however, that certain government officials do monitor mail from tax-haven countries, especially those on the following list:
Antigua
Aruba
Austria
Bahamas
Belize
Bermuda
British Virgin Islands
Cayman Islands
Channel Islands
Columbia
Cook Islands
Ecuador
Estonia
Gibraltar
Germany
Great Britain
Guernsey
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iran
Isle of Man
Latvia
Liberia
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Marshall Islands
Nauru
Nevis
Netherlands
Nigeria
Pakistan
Panama
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
Switzerland
Thailand
Turks and Caicos Islands
United Arab Emirates
Uruguay
Vanuatu
Venezuela
Also, what do your incoming letters look like? If you are in my age bracket, you may remember when your mother dripped hot red wax on the flap of an envelope, then pressed a seal into the wax before it cooled. The more modern method is to seal the flaps with clear tape. Neither is secure, and both methods (especially the red wax seal!) draw unwanted attention to the envelope, saying: “Something valuable in here.”
Further, anyone with a spray can of freon gas—sold under various trade names in spy shops—can read what’s inside without opening the envelope at all. When hit with the spray, the envelope becomes transparent. Thirty seconds later, as the gas evaporates, it returns to its normal condition, with no evidence of this intrusion. (To find out if this is happening, have your sender mail you an innocuous letter, using a felt-tip pen for addressing the envelope. The ink will run when carbon tetrachloride is used—thus tipping you off that the mail was read.)
Methods once confined to the CIA are now common knowledge, thanks to Amazon.com. They offer used copies of the CIA Flaps and Seals Manual that carefully details “surreptitious entries of highly protected items of mail,” and removing and replacing seals and using carbon tetrachloride on tape. What worries the CIA and other surreptitious readers of secret mail is not the sealed or taped envelope, but the normal one. “The most innocuous-looking envelope,” says the CIA manual, “may be the one that will get the operator in the most trouble.” Correct! See the following question and answer about innocuous-looking envelopes.
How I can best protect my outgoing mail?
First of all, the envelope should appear normal. A junk-mail appearance is best (as long as the recipient knows that in advance), and for that reason I prefer a standard #10 envelope with a laser-printed label. If a sealed, taped, or otherwise obviously protected envelope is desired, enclose and protect everything in a #9 envelope and insert that one in the #10 envelope. If you are not familiar with U.S. envelope numbers, note these measurements:
#10 envelope: |
| 41⁄8 × 91⁄2 in. (10.5 × 24 cm.) |
#9 envelope: |
| 37⁄8 × 87⁄8 in. (10 × 22.5 cm.) |
To counteract the envelope’s transparency when sprayed with freon, wrap the contents of the #9 envelope with carbon paper, if you can still find it in this modern age.
What’s the best way to have a letter remailed from some faraway place?
For a few years after the anthrax scare that followed the events of 9/11, it was best not to even think about remailing a letter. However, the scare seems to have receded, so I’ll suggest a method that usually works quite well.
Prepare your letter, seal it in an addressed #9 envelope (available at any office-supply store), and put on the correct postage. Enclose your letter in a #10 envelope, add a cover letter as shown below, and a $5 bill. Note that you don’t use a last name, so there is no way to prove you were not a guest.
Sheraton El Conquistador
Attention: Concierge
I was a recent guest at your hotel, and most impressed with your fine service. I do, however, have a small problem, and I must ask you a favor.
During my Arizona stay, I promised to write to a friend about an errand he gave me, and also to an associate while in Tucson. I forgot to do both things, so would you kindly help me cover my derrière by mailing the enclosed items?
I enclose $5 for your trouble, and hope to thank you in person when I return to the Sheraton El Conquistador later this year.
Yours sincerely,
Jim
Mail your letter to “Concierge” at one of the very best hotels in the city of your choice. (You can get the name and address from AAA, or off the Internet.) Here is a sample of how to address the envelope:
For the CONCIERGE:
Sheraton El Conquistador
10000 North Oracle Road
Tucson, Arizona 85737
Note: If there is some doubt that the hotel has a concierge, just address the letter to “Reception.” (If there isn’t a reception desk, you’ve chosen too small a hotel.)
From now on, when you travel, pick up sample envelopes and letterheads from luxury hotels. Staying at them is best, but you can often just drift up to the desk when they’re busy with check-ins and kindly ask for “a sheet of paper and an envelope.” One of each is enough, as you’ll never use a specific hotel for remailing more than once.
Does the U.S. Postal Service take a picture of every letter I send out, and if so, should I be worried?
When I first discovered this information some years ago. I wondered what the purpose of this was, how long the pictures were kept on file, and whether or not the back of the envelope was also being photographed. Thanks to a friend inside the USPS, I now have the facts. The following is what happens when you mail a letter:
1. The front side of your envelope is photographed. At the same time, a fine color barcode is sprayed on the back side of your letter.
2. The image is then sent to a remote site, usually in another state where non-postal workers work at terminals and key in the barcode for that specific letter.
3. Your letter then is processed through a machine that reads the light-colored barcode on the back side and instantly sprays a regular barcode on the lower front side of the envelope. (However, if a letter already has a barcode on it, it will usually not have its picture taken. For example, mail from utility companies gets bypassed from this process.)
“I don’t know how long those images are stored for,” says my informant. “However, my guess is that it no longer than a few days.”
* * *
Conclusion: Normally, it makes no difference whether you put a return address on the front or the back of the envelope. However, mail handlers can make a note of the return addresses you are using, if they have a legitimate reason for doing so. If, therefore, you are concerned about certain sensitive mail, one suggestion would be to not include a return address on your outgoing mail.
A better solution, however, would be to use a ghost address for the return. That way, you will know if your letter failed to arrive. (It may be returned for insufficient postage or for an error in the address. These things happen to the best of us.) It will also prevent your letter from ending up in Atlanta, Saint Paul, or San Francisco. These are the USPS’s three major mail recovery centers and once your letter gets there, it will be opened and examined.