Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > Pennsylvania > Pittsburgh
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 02-14-2010, 07:15 PM
 
6 posts, read 89,047 times
Reputation: 18

Advertisements

My W-2 form arrived in the mail with the perforated edges ripped open, exposing all kinds of personal information. It's an identity thief's dream come true. My neighbors couldn't have done this because I have a locking mailbox. This had to have happened in transit.

Please pay very close attention to your mail. While it may have been damaged by one of the sorting machines, I find it very odd that my W-2 form is the piece of mail torn open, not my junk mail. I haven't received a piece of damaged mail in years. I have since filed a report with the post office and placed a fraud alert with the major credit reporting companies.

Have any other Pittsburghers had this problem? Hopefully it just got torn by one of the machines, but with ID theft rampant anymore, you can't be too careful.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 02-14-2010, 11:16 PM
 
Location: Pittsburgh area
9,912 posts, read 24,527,214 times
Reputation: 5162
Not seen a problem on any sensitive docs, but a fair bit of damaged mail here and there if you get enough different kinds of mail.

The reality is with a locked mailbox the only thing left apart from damage is snooping postal workers. The likelihood of that is small seems to me, that someone would open up the W2 with it being so obvious just to get, what, a soc number and your income amount? To use something like that for significant enough gain for the risk (and even then, you'd have to have a really high income to make it worthwhile) is more sophisticated than most average folks would be capable of, methinks, and to sell the info would never be enough gain to be worth risking the job.

That info, while you shouldn't just leave it out for anyone to see, just isn't worth that much without some significant skill in, well, fraud. So my guess is that even if the packaging makes it seem unlikely, it's damage. When the damage is obvious they put it into special packaging that admits the damage. Perhaps it wasn't obvious enough for them to catch in this case.

The other possibility is that it was misdelivered first, that person opened it, then gave it back for the mail carrier to get it to the right place. The same things apply I'd say. (What is the average person going to be able to do with that info? Not much.) It's common in offices for example to open up everything that comes in without much of a glance at the address. Probably true at home for some people as well.

I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it. But if you want you can grab your credit report at AnnualCreditReport.com (that's the real free one mandated by law) and if you only get one bureau at a time, you can basically get a new report every 4 months. (There are three reporting bureaus, and you can get one report from each every 12 months.) Doing that now would be pointless; nothing fraudulent would hit for at least a month or two. It's a good thing to look at anyway, not a bad habit to be in even if nothing unusual like this has happened.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 02-16-2010, 01:44 AM
 
135 posts, read 385,654 times
Reputation: 45
Unfortunately once they have those pieces of information they are you and can do some real damage to your credit since they can get credit cards in your name and open accounts in your name as well, and by the time you find out they can have thousands of dollars worth of debt against you, now I hope you have notified the Post Office and reported this to your local police force so they can keep an eye out if this happens again, for this time of year is when alot of identity theft goes on and they can get this info in one shot, and I would also notify your credit card companies also of this situation as well just in case because more than likely they know what credit cards you have and notify your bank as well do this just in case and contact the Department of transportation to make sure someone does not try to get a duplicate license made up, because unfortunately they can re direct all your important pieces of mail to themselves now because think about this what information do companies ask for to confirm you are you ,your name ,your S.S.#, your date of birth, your address and your phone number and sometimes where you work and they got some of this info off your W-2's and the rest they got out of your trash from your old bills, old birthday cards,old receipts anything with even a small piece of info about you on it will be a big help to steal your identity, you will not believe the info you have thrown in the trash and once the trash is on the curb it is public domain and anybody is allowed to take it, so be careful what you throw away and notify everybody that you have to, immediately.
Good Luck
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 02-16-2010, 09:30 AM
 
6,294 posts, read 10,996,614 times
Reputation: 3085
I used to work at the Post Office at the air mail facility at the Bradley International Airport in Hartford while I was going to Business School. I remember seeing the machines that processed the mail would often times rip open envelopes because they would get pinched between the rollers of the machine. Could be something like this happened and it is less likely that a postal employee actually opened it up either on purpose or by accident.

However, if you live in a wealthy neighborhood or give the appearance that your household is very well off then it could be possible that someone opened up your mail box and happened to look inside at the info. I doubt an alleged culprit would do this to someone that lives in an average neighborhood knowing full well the occupants would likely have limited funds to tap into.

But most likely a machine at the Post Office is responsible.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 02-16-2010, 10:11 AM
 
Location: Pittsburgh area
9,912 posts, read 24,527,214 times
Reputation: 5162
Quote:
Originally Posted by PA-native71 View Post
Unfortunately once they have those pieces of information they are you and can do some real damage to your credit since they can get credit cards in your name and open accounts in your name as well, and by the time you find out they can have thousands of dollars worth of debt against you, now I hope you have notified the Post Office and reported this to your local police force so they can keep an eye out if this happens again, for this time of year is when alot of identity theft goes on and they can get this info in one shot, and I would also notify your credit card companies also of this situation as well just in case because more than likely they know what credit cards you have and notify your bank as well do this just in case and contact the Department of transportation to make sure someone does not try to get a duplicate license made up, because unfortunately they can re direct all your important pieces of mail to themselves now because think about this what information do companies ask for to confirm you are you ,your name ,your S.S.#, your date of birth, your address and your phone number and sometimes where you work and they got some of this info off your W-2's and the rest they got out of your trash from your old bills, old birthday cards,old receipts anything with even a small piece of info about you on it will be a big help to steal your identity, you will not believe the info you have thrown in the trash and once the trash is on the curb it is public domain and anybody is allowed to take it, so be careful what you throw away and notify everybody that you have to, immediately.
Good Luck
This is a big paragraph full of overkill. ID theft IS a serious problem when it happens, but one ripped W2 in a locked mailbox does not ID theft make. Again, with it being a LOCKED MAILBOX the biggest likelihood is that it was damaged somewhere. Of the much less probable scenarios where someone opened the envelope and looked this person would have to be either a) rogue postal employee (highly unlikely, payoff is not great enough) or b) misdelivery. If the envelope was misdelivered, what is the likelihood that the person receiving it just happens to be enough of a fraud-ster (why the heck is that word censored if I don't put the dash in? LOL) to use that info? It's pretty damn small.

You might want to notify the post office, of course. The police? They're going to laugh, unless you mean the postal guys. They might want a report. I can't imagine what the regular police might do. There's no evidence of someone tampering with the locked mailbox right? Even if there is, that is also handled by the Postal Inspectors: https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/c...complaint.aspx

The other thing to do is to keep a watchful eye for any financial mail. Make sure you still receive any banking or credit card statements, etc. I think calling credit card companies is a waste of time at this point. This is not yet evidence of an ID theft taking place. There's nothing that's going be done until AFTER there is ID theft. The card companies aren't going to suddenly reissue your cards just because that bit of mail was opened. (Heck, I got a wrong charge on my card last week. They're pretty convinced it's just a mistake, not fraud, no new card.) The key is to catch that quickly. And for that, you can as I suggested before grab a copy of your credit report and scan it for unusual activity. This is free, 100% free, at https://www.annualcreditreport.com/ required by law. (Not at the heavily advertised Free Credit Report; that is a service they are selling.) If it makes you feel better, you can sign up for a monitoring service for a year, probably costs 100 bucks or so (something like Identity Guard, etc.), but with a sharp eye you can do this yourself with the free annual reports. You might pull one credit bureau now, one in another month or two, and then one more after that, to see if anything weird turns up on the report. The likelihood is it won't.

No, I am not an ID theft professional. I'm just not an alarmist. The S.S. # plus address plus employer is a significant bit of info to disclose, but even those won't get you everywhere, and it still has to be in the hands of the right fraud-ster. The average neighbor or whomever that receives it by mistake, opens it, isn't going to be able to do anything harmful with it.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 02-17-2010, 01:10 AM
 
Location: Pittsburgh, USA
3,131 posts, read 9,332,580 times
Reputation: 1111
I figure the mail in my mailbox is for me and I open it without reading who it's addressed to. Once I opened a Comcast bill and was shocked to see I was over $300 behind and about to be shut off. When I looked at the name on the bill it was my next door neighbor.

What to do? If I stuffed it back into the torn envelope and gave it to them, it no doubt would cause embarrassment and I'd be a bad guy for reading their mail. I couldn't sneak it into their mailbox because someone is always home there. I threw it into the trash.

I should have just dropped it into a mailbox or taken it to the post office and explain. But I also figured they were aware. Possibly your W-2 had a similar experience. It's kind of common for mail to get misdelivered.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-26-2012, 01:28 AM
 
1 posts, read 14,764 times
Reputation: 10
I just had a similar experience.. I received my w2 in the mail with a tear on the top left hand corner of the envelope. It appears as though someone was attempting to look inside the envelope by the way it is bent. I normally don't get mail that is damaged, but when it happens, it does not look intentional. I know for a fact someone was looking in this envelope, but not sure how to act. I don't want to take this to the extreme, but I just need to know the best way to protect my info. Even if they can't do anything with my info, I don't like the fact that my ssn is flying around out there.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-26-2012, 04:04 AM
 
43,011 posts, read 107,590,543 times
Reputation: 30709
I agree that it's likely a neighbor opened it accidently and then put it in your box when they realized it had been delivered to the wrong address. If someone were purposely stealing your identity, they would have just stolen it from your box, and you would have thought it had never been delivered.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-26-2012, 05:56 AM
 
Location: Virginia
18,717 posts, read 30,948,293 times
Reputation: 42988
Quote:
Originally Posted by greg42 View Post
The other possibility is that it was misdelivered first, that person opened it, then gave it back for the mail carrier to get it to the right place. The same things apply I'd say. (What is the average person going to be able to do with that info? Not much.) It's common in offices for example to open up everything that comes in without much of a glance at the address. Probably true at home for some people as well.
Very true, especially what I bolded above. Lots of people open mail without looking at the address first.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-26-2012, 06:39 AM
 
Location: Pittsburgh area
9,912 posts, read 24,527,214 times
Reputation: 5162
Quote:
Originally Posted by DeezNutzz View Post
I just had a similar experience.. I received my w2 in the mail with a tear on the top left hand corner of the envelope. It appears as though someone was attempting to look inside the envelope by the way it is bent. I normally don't get mail that is damaged, but when it happens, it does not look intentional. I know for a fact someone was looking in this envelope, but not sure how to act. I don't want to take this to the extreme, but I just need to know the best way to protect my info. Even if they can't do anything with my info, I don't like the fact that my ssn is flying around out there.
Just keep an eye on things, as I mentioned in my post from a couple years ago. Give it a while before looking at your credit report because any activity is going to take a few weeks at least, maybe check it in a month or so. Look for new inquiries that are not from your own activity, or any new credit lines being opened. If nothing looks out of place, you should be in good shape, but then check it again in several months.

What happened in your case? Do you have a locked mailbox or a street or house mailbox that's open? As I said back then, the chances that your W2 fell into the hands of the right kind of fraud-ster to take advantage of it is quite small. The postal workers aren't likely to be peeking so what remains is the misdelivery (someone else may have started to open before they realized) or, if your box is open, someone took it out. The latter would be the more significant event, so it makes a little bit of difference if it was a locked mailbox or not.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Settings
X
Data:
Loading data...
Based on 2000-2020 data
Loading data...

123
Hide US histogram


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > Pennsylvania > Pittsburgh
View detailed profiles of:

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top