Mail theft and identity theft: how to protect your mailbox

Your mailbox gets the documents that matter most to a thief: credit card and bank statements, replacement cards, checks, pre-approved credit offers and tax forms with your Social Security number. The Social Security Administration lists stealing mail, including statements, pre-approved credit offers, new checks and tax information, as one of the ways scammers get personal information.

Outgoing mail matters too. A check left in a mailbox with the flag up can be taken and altered. The Postal Inspection Service says postal inspectors arrested almost 9,300 suspects for theft of mail and packages from 2019 to 2024.

1. Sign up for Informed Delivery. The free USPS service sends a daily email with grayscale images of the address side of your incoming letter-size mail, and lets you opt in to delivery notifications. If a statement or card you were expecting never shows up, you know to call.
2. Pick up mail promptly and use the USPS Hold Mail service when you are away, as the Postal Inspection Service advises.
3. Mail checks and sensitive items inside the post office or hand them to a carrier rather than leaving them in a box overnight. Better still, pay bills online.
4. Go paperless for bank, card, insurance and benefit statements, so fewer documents travel by mail at all.
5. Opt out of prescreened credit offers at OptOutPrescreen.com or 1-888-567-8688, the site and line the FTC points to. You can opt out for five years online or permanently by returning a signed form.
6. File a change of address with USPS and your banks when you move.

1. Report it to the Postal Inspection Service online at uspis.gov/report or by phone at 1-877-876-2455. Call 911 if a crime is in progress.
2. Call the sender of anything valuable that is missing: your bank for a card or checkbook, the issuer for a replacement card, your employer or the IRS for tax forms.
3. If the missing mail showed your Social Security number, or you are not sure, freeze your credit at all three bureaus and get an IRS Identity Protection PIN.
4. Check your free credit reports for new accounts.

If an account has already been opened in your name, follow our identity theft recovery plan.

A locking mailbox with a slot lets the carrier drop mail in while only you can take it out. It is worth it if mail theft is common on your street, your box is far from the house, or you cannot get to it every day. Before you buy, check that the model meets USPS requirements for curbside or wall-mounted boxes, that your HOA allows it, and that larger packages will still fit or have another safe place to go.

Some people, such as those who move often, travel for long periods or do not want their home address on forms and accounts, use a virtual mailbox. Mail goes to a staffed address, gets scanned, and you choose what to open, forward or shred. Anytime Mailbox is one such service. Be aware that some banks and government agencies require a residential address, and that a virtual mailbox does nothing for mail already addressed to your home.

If your goal is keeping your address off people-search sites, free opt-outs do more; see removing your info from data broker sites.