I realise that this question is subject to local trends (and I’m in the US), but I encourage people in other countries to submit their methods!
How do you accept packages/deliveries anonymously? Of course, there are mail redirection services, but a third party which corroborates with different parts of the chain can likely figure out your identity and what you have purchased/have incoming.
I haven’t been able to find a good solution to this yet, and I believe the new rule in the US is that the receivers identity must be reported to the government? This (or a variation of this, I don’t remember) is a recent event.
Thanks!
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but most people can lookup most other people’s addresses in the US for free (or cheaply) on websites like whitepages.com. Even without that, if someone is very determined, they can visit the record office for the area on get public info on you, which also likely includes address.
What’s the benefit of paying such a premium for an anonymous delivery if your address is likely already available?
The only thing I can think of is if buying something sketchy, but I’m genuinely curious here.
I didn’t know that. Thanks for bringing up this point.
TBH my threat model was to keep the bigger companies from knowing where I live. I.e. if I shop from Amazon and I enter their site at home, they can make an estimate based on my profile, my browser and my IP, amongst other things. Then, it wouldn’t matter if I ordered to an Amazon locker since they know where I live anyway.
Assuming I maintained a sanitized account and only accessed it from various locations using public WiFi, what could I do to prevent Amazon from knowing the locality I’m in, especially if it’s too big to get to a locker? Likely a P.O box but even government agencies are known to sell data to brokers. AFAIK there’s no way to pay anonymously for UPS or something, which means my identity is being tracked again.
One reason you’ll have difficulty finding something that can do this with total anonymity is that it overlaps a lot with what financial scammers want to do: get the money (traceable but it will take some time for the other side to catch on) and use it in a way that isn’t traceable.
It’s public knowledge. If they want to know where you personally live, they could look it up via the ways I previously mentioned.
Heck, even if you never visit their sites, they could easily get big lists of names and addresses that may include you: all legally.
Any attempt at fighting that is likely not to be fruitful. It’s basically security by obscurity, you’re trying to complicate it via one way, but they can just go another (more obvious) way if they wanted.
It’s more like I’d like to not link those purchases to my identity
Ah. Then just buy a gift card in cash from CVS, etc. Then use it on an alternative account and delivered to one of those pickup boxes.
Still sketch though lol.