Can they track you down by a letter?

[Alpo]

Let's say that the cops are looking for me for something. So obviously I'm hiding out.

 

And I send a letter to sub Deacon Joe. Now, obviously, if I put a return address on it - 1 2 3 elm Street Kalamazoo Michigan - they know where to find me.

 

But if I don't put a return address on it, and I mail it from a large town - LA, New York City, DC - is there any way they could find me?

[Badlands Bob #61228]

All they will have is the postmark on the envelope.  

[PaleWolf Brunelle, #2495L]

I would be more concerned regarding how they obtained the letter from Joe. 

[sassnetguy50]

7 minutes ago, PaleWolf Brunelle, #2495L said:

I would be more concerned regarding how they obtained the letter from Joe. 

All letters are scanned now.  The police could get it from USPS.

[Subdeacon Joe]

4 minutes ago, sassnetguy50 said:

All letters are scanned now.  The police could get it from USPS.

 

But if dropped in a street side mailbox, or  directly at the postal facility there would be no way of tracing the letter..... which I would have burned per instructions.

[PaleWolf Brunelle, #2495L]

Alpo...what the heck did you do to warrant a USPS trace put on your name?? 

 

 

[Alpo]

I'm sorry, that's Marshal Mo Hare's question.

[watab kid]

i no longer think there is a way of preventing them from tracing and finding you if they really want you , look at all the jan 6th victims that are in jail and then look at all the arsonists , looters , assaulters and trespasser's that walk free in MPLS/ST PAUL , chicago , Seattle ....ETC 

[sassnetguy50]

22 minutes ago, Subdeacon Joe said:

 

But if dropped in a street side mailbox, or  directly at the postal facility there would be no way of tracing the letter..... which I would have burned per instructions.

If dropped at the postal facility, there would likely be security cameras.  (there was a bill introduced last year requiring all post offices to have cameras, I don't know if it went anywhere) There are cameras on the only 2 blue boxes remaining in my town.  Then the police go door to door asking for footage to track you back to where you parked/walked from.  If they are determined enough, that footage would be checked.  It could be narrowed down by the input subsystem code, date and time printed on the envelope.  By burning the contents of the envelope you have stopped them from tieing the specific printer (some printers print their serial number and print time/date) to Alpo.

[Alpo]

54 minutes ago, Alpo said:

I'm sorry, that's Marshal Mo Hare's question.

I see that confused you PaleWolf.

 

Frequently I ask quasi legal questions, involving a crime and getting away with it, or burying a body, or something similar to that. And every time I ask one of those questions, the Marshall wants to know what I did this time that the cops are after me for.

 

So you see, you were kind of stepping on his turf.

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Once upon a time I did “mystery shops” where I would go somewhere and use the service, buy a meal, ask about the vehicle being sold, buy propane , mail a package, take pictures, and get paid for doing it. Nothing big money, but something to do.

 

all came with a questionaire. For the post office shops, they asked for time of events, and said to be accurate because they could check the film. I gave the correct time and added that the post office clocks were five minutes fast near quitting time.

[Sedalia Dave]

Being as post marks are now done at the postal hubs and not the local post office, Narrowing down where a letter was mailed from just by the postmark would be rather difficult. A given hub may cover towns a hundred or more miles away.

 

To avoid cameras all you would need to do is place the letter in a random residential mail box and raise the flag. Carrier picks it up and it goes into the outgoing mail bin. Those are collected and bagged at the local PO and at the end of the day the bag is sent to the USPS hub where it enters automated machines  that determine the final destination, apply the correct bar code and verify the correct postage, and then post mark the letter. 

 

 

 

 

[Crooked River Pete, SASS 43485]

There was a time when there were people around the country who would " forward"  your mail for you. You would write your letter, put it in an addressed, stamped envelop, put that in another one with a dollar or two and send it to one of these guys. They'd keep the money and drop your letter in the mail in their local post. I wonder if any of those guys still exist?

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

9 minutes ago, Crooked River Pete, SASS 43485 said:

There was a time when there were people around the country who would " forward"  your mail for you. You would write your letter, put it in an addressed, stamped envelop, put that in another one with a dollar or two and send it to one of these guys. They'd keep the money and drop your letter in the mail in their local post. I wonder if any of those guys still exist?

There was a time when the PO in Loveland, CO, would remail a letter or card for you on Valentine’s Day so you got the special postmark.

[Badlands Bob #61228]

14 minutes ago, Crooked River Pete, SASS 43485 said:

There was a time when there were people around the country who would " forward"  your mail for you. You would write your letter, put it in an addressed, stamped envelop, put that in another one with a dollar or two and send it to one of these guys. They'd keep the money and drop your letter in the mail in their local post. I wonder if any of those guys still exist?

They still do this at Christmas time from some place called North Pole.

[Muleshoe Bill SASS #67022]

Basically Sedalia Dave is correct. USPS is so automated now that it would be almost impossible to track a letter back to the sender. Mail processing centers get the raw mail from the area they serve beginning in early afternoon. The mail collected goes into large hampers with no segregation for area collected from. Then it goes to the separation belts to separate, letters from flats(magazine, large flat envelopes and the like) letters go that way flats another direction and as those videos show, the machines do the work. These days it is quite possible that once a letter is placed in a collection box, or picked up by a Carriers, it will not be touched by a human until the delivery Carrier is in front of your door or mailbox. Not at all like when I started as a Clerk-Carrier back in 78.

[Dantankerous]

Pinkertons found Butch and Sundance by monitering the mail...

[Bailey Creek,5759]

Texas Rangers found Wes Harden. Tracking a letter.

[T.K.]

Not to get off topic, but a guy I worked with used to send all his holiday cards by putting the address he wanted to mail to it the return address spot and his address in the "mail to" section and not put any stamp on it.

Turns out the USPS will send a letter all the way across the US for insufficient postage !

[Alpo]

I was living in a townhouse. Had the mailbox next to the door. And outgoing mail you attached to the mailbox with a clothes pin.

 

That seemed like a really dumb way to do things to me. I was used to a mailbox at the street, where the mail sat inside the enclosed box and you put the red flag up.

 

On the corner of the street, maybe 70 feet from my front door, was one of the big blue and red mailboxes.

 

So one day I get a letter for someone that no longer lived there. But I know where she moved to. So I draw a line through my address and next to it I wrote MOVED TO and her new address.

 

But, as I say, the idea of clothes pinning this letter to my mailbox seemed really stupid, so I walked the 70 feet and dropped it in the big blue and red mailbox on the corner.

 

Two days later it was redelivered to my house.

[Eyesa Horg]

I've still got a Christmas present that made it to my distribution center, the next day it was down in New Jersey instead of my house in Vermont!! Tracking still shows it in New Jersey and they update the delivery date every couple days! Amazon issued a refund!

[Rye Miles #13621]

never mind

Edited January 17 by Rye Miles #13621

[Sam Sackett]

Fingerprints?

 

Sam Sackett 

[watab kid]

On 1/16/2024 at 11:09 PM, Alpo said:

I see that confused you PaleWolf.

 

Frequently I ask quasi legal questions, involving a crime and getting away with it, or burying a body, or something similar to that. And every time I ask one of those questions, the Marshall wants to know what I did this time that the cops are after me for.

 

So you see, you were kind of stepping on his turf.

yup - you gotta be careful where you step , but i see why you walked there if you aint been in this pasture before , 

 

14 hours ago, Alpo said:

I was living in a townhouse. Had the mailbox next to the door. And outgoing mail you attached to the mailbox with a clothes pin.

 

That seemed like a really dumb way to do things to me. I was used to a mailbox at the street, where the mail sat inside the enclosed box and you put the red flag up.

 

On the corner of the street, maybe 70 feet from my front door, was one of the big blue and red mailboxes.

 

So one day I get a letter for someone that no longer lived there. But I know where she moved to. So I draw a line through my address and next to it I wrote MOVED TO and her new address.

 

But, as I say, the idea of clothes pinning this letter to my mailbox seemed really stupid, so I walked the 70 feet and dropped it in the big blue and red mailbox on the corner.

 

Two days later it was redelivered to my house.

 

 

ive had that happen too , dumb part of it is that we have my MILs mail come here [she is in a nursing home and no longer cognizant of whats going on ] we get mail for people with the same name that have never lived here , we put return to sender , not at this address and so forth , they come back here , sme ae relatives that are distant - not anyone we might see , guess its easier to redeliver than to track down , 

[PaleWolf Brunelle, #2495L]

1 hour ago, watab kid said:

yup - you gotta be careful where you step , but i see why you walked there if you aint been in this pasture before , 

 

FYI...I been hangin' around this Saloon for a mite longer than yerowndangself (Alpo's got me beat by 5 days)...bein' a "semi-reformed" outlaw, my curiosity regardin' the details of the theoretical inquiry got the better of me. 

[Rye Miles #13621]

DNA from the envelope where you lick it?? 

[Sedalia Dave]

On 1/17/2024 at 11:19 AM, Alpo said:

I was living in a townhouse. Had the mailbox next to the door. And outgoing mail you attached to the mailbox with a clothes pin.

 

That seemed like a really dumb way to do things to me. I was used to a mailbox at the street, where the mail sat inside the enclosed box and you put the red flag up.

 

On the corner of the street, maybe 70 feet from my front door, was one of the big blue and red mailboxes.

 

So one day I get a letter for someone that no longer lived there. But I know where she moved to. So I draw a line through my address and next to it I wrote MOVED TO and her new address.

 

But, as I say, the idea of clothes pinning this letter to my mailbox seemed really stupid, so I walked the 70 feet and dropped it in the big blue and red mailbox on the corner.

 

Two days later it was redelivered to my house.

 

18 hours ago, watab kid said:

 

ive had that happen too , dumb part of it is that we have my MILs mail come here [she is in a nursing home and no longer cognizant of whats going on ] we get mail for people with the same name that have never lived here , we put return to sender , not at this address and so forth , they come back here , sme ae relatives that are distant - not anyone we might see , guess its easier to redeliver than to track down , 

 

 

For several years the mail that is sorted is stamped with a barcode along the bottom edge of the letter.  If you do not obliterate this barcode the machine will read this barcode and ignore the address written on the envelope,  redirecting the letter right back to you.  

 

You need to obliterate the barcode to prevent this.

[Muleshoe Bill SASS #67022]

1 hour ago, Sedalia Dave said:

 

 

 

For several years the mail that is sorted is stamped with a barcode along the bottom edge of the letter.  If you do not obliterate this barcode the machine will read this barcode and ignore the address written on the envelope,  redirecting the letter right back to you.  

 

You need to obliterate the barcode to prevent this.

ALSO  Flip the letter over and look at the backside. You will usually see a barcode there too. Kill the bar code with a Sharpie. You can usually force the machine (LOOK OUT SKYNET) to ignore the barcode if you strike off the  first 5 lines and the last three lines.

[watab kid]

good to know - i was aware of the barcode but did not realize it overroad the address and zip code ----we got tpo many codes and not enough real intelligence anymore 

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

As all letters mailed from Prescott Valley have post marks from Phoenix (93 miles south of here) they'd likely track me down from my return address stickers.