The future of the mail deliveries.

[Jerry_Atrick]

I am not saying that we shouldn't tranistion to email. Most things sich as the sharing of engineering plans, and even tax returns, etc, are fine because even if they are intercepted, big deal. I have never met my accountant and when the books are submitted, they become public record anyway. Maybe ASIC charges a fee, whereas UK Companies House doesn't, but for a small chunk of change I can find out most of what I want to for any company or sole proprietor (and anything in between).

 

My argument is that email is still  not secure enough to force people to use it, even when the actions are performed though secure online services for some things - such as official government business and financial transactions. 

 

3 hours ago, octave said:

As usual, these discussions prompt me to do some research.  Whilst there are plenty of online scams, there are also scams involving physical mail theft.  One particular scheme involves stealing a bill from a letter box and reprinting it with different bank details.

 

Physical bills can be used in ID fraud. If you are receiving physical bills, you ought to shred them before disposal

Advice from Victorian Police Delivery and Mail Security says:

 

Minimise the amount of mail delivered to your home by:

• Not having bank or utility documents sent by post. Instead, have them sent by email.

 

You're quite right. I didn't say snail mail entirely protects. What you didn't mention is that email phishing fraud really, really dwarves stolen letter fraud - so the chances of it are happening are quite low. And while the "success" rate of snail mail fraud is higher, the overall lost to fraud this way is significantly lower as well. Also, I couodn't find any data, but I would imagine that the success rate of letter fraud is dropping two for two main reasons: Firstly, with direct debit/BPAY, secondly,. most people these days that pay a recurring bill probably have the payee details stored anyway, fourthly (not sure about Australia), when paying new payees, you have to enter the account name, whether it is business or personal and the bank BSB and account and if they do not match, you are warned to check the bill.

 

Also, if they decide to say up the bill significantly to increase their return, the utility company or whoever is likely to receive a phone call. And it is a lot of faff for the perpetrator. They have to steal the mail, scan the document, make the change, stuff the envelope making it look not tampered and deliver it again as the stamp has been stamped. 

 

In terms of the advice to send the bill to you electronically - it is good advice. Except for two things. Firstly, there is Business Email Compromise, which takes two forms. First, the hacker gets control of the email servers of the business and adulterates the email, as per this poor couple falling victim to: https://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/hope-and-tom-paid-250-000-to-secure-their-dream-home-then-nearly-lost-it-all-20251104-p5n7pr.html 

 

The other is where a sniffer reads the email and attachment, makes the changes and immediately sends out a revised email, apologising for the mistake of payment details in the original email. 

 

If you want your physical bill untampered, yes, get it sent electronically. I agree. But, now you are expecting emails from that company, and there will inevitablly be a phishing email calling people to urgent action because of an imminent account closure or to validate or cancel an unusual transaction. And most people should ignore any links and log into their accounts, but sadly, even savvy people whose circumstances led to a lapse of concentration or the scammers merely put together some situation that coincidentally is very similar to the victims own at the moment, and in a lapse of concentration, they have clicked the link, divulged their credentials and their account has been drained in the blink of an eye.

 

So, you may be stiffed $100 or so for your monthly electricity bill - once - and if you don't use BPAY or you ignore the payee being dfifferent to the banks record. I know of one person who had over £10K drained from their account. They eventually got it back, but ultimately we collectively pay. 

 

And my point is, at the moment, to default to receive snail mail for financial transactions, but allow people to opt into pure email. They either recognise and mitigate the risks, or they ignore them, or they choose not to. Despite the risks of mail theft and fraud, the risks around email at this point in time are much higher. And therefore, I would suggest the advice given by Victoria Police Mail Delivery and Security, aboive, is narrowly framed and does not take into account all of the risks. 

4 hours ago, octave said:

I came for the discussion but stayed for the "untitting"

Well. I dunno.. I am normally happy to have their tops disrobed, but untitting sounds gruesome to me. 

 

[octave]

Just thinking about how I operate in terms of mail. As far as government communications, that is in my MGov account.  I may get an email that tells me there is a message (with no sensitive information) in MyGov, which I can then log into. This requires multi-factor authentication. At no point does any sensitive information sit in my physical mail box for 3 weeks while I am on my holiday. We wouldn't mind hitting the road for  6 months or more.

 

I do not often get an actual bill in my email.   For my electricity (which is by direct debit anyway), I get an email saying my bill is due on a certain day (again, no sensitive info in email). I would then generally go to the company's portal and check my usage to make sure it is correct.   For my rates I would get an email reminder of when they are due, again I go into the council portal and pay online.  This also applies to vehicle rego and licence. Recently, I had work done on my rooftop solar. Likewise, this is done within their portal. The only thing I can think of in recent times is repairs to my Aircon after which they phoned me and sent an account through Email.

 

I think we may be a little off track. There are many reasons people are not using the letter system. It is not all about email.  My mother used to write letters to our relatives overseas.  I can clearly remember retrieving the blue aerogram from England from the letter box..  These days, most of her relatives are dead and buried; however, she communicates with her best friend of over 70 years via video call. My son and partner are in China at the moment, and they will not send a postcard, but every day he will message us a whole bunch of great pictures. When my son is at home in NZ we will chat via Messenger or video call.

I cant actually remember the last time I needed to post a letter. If everyone resumed receiving bills and official letters by snail mail, I don't think it would have much of an effect on the economics of letter delivery.

 

So, back to bills how many bills are just sent as an email rather than just a prompt to sign into your account? In any case, I am going to pay online anyway. 

 

I believe in Denmark that for those who want to use snail mail, the service will still be available, but by a company contracted to fulfil the mandated obligation.    Having a postie ride/drive down every road to deliver very few letters is just too inefficient.  

 

I think the bottom line is that the number of physical letters being posted has dropped heavily and will continue to decline.   The price of delivering a letter can only really go up.  I am not against subsidisation (to a point), and I assume you believe this also.   Weighing off the risk of email fraud, billions of emails are sent every day, and most of them are not bills etc. If all bills and official documents communications return to snail mail, it won't really make a dent on the number of emails sent and received; each of these probably does carry some very small risk.

 

I do believe the way I run my personal admin is relatively safe, and I can't see any significant risk. Am I missing something?

 

My view is that as it becomes more and more financially untenable, we keep a private service going for older folk (this need will pass) or those who feel uncomfortable with digital methods. Do you believe this must be carried out by the official postal service?  Outside of the city, mail is usually delivered by a contractor anyway. I don't believe the old-fashioned postie, going down every road to deliver a very small number of articles, should be done at any cost (financially, environmentally, etc.). Parcels are not only delivered by Auspost there are many delivery companies competing to deliver to me, why not the same with letters?

[onetrack]

7 hours ago, rgmwa said:

Sounds like he did a good job. Did he reverse engineer the existing frames to check their capacity or just draw up the plans?

Not sure what he did, rgm - but I would expect he checked all those load-bearing capacities and sizes, and he seems to be a pretty switched-on bloke who understands the loads that sheds have to withstand.

[red750]

 

One pf the things affecting the writing of letters is that younger people these days are have forgotten or have not learnt to read and write cursive.  Everything is done on a keyboard. Even I now have to sit and practice a bit before I write anything, or it is totally unreadable.

 

Jerry, you seem to be the expert in this area. What is the chance of fraud with cloud storage? It seems everything you do ends up on the cloud. Even transferring a photo from my phone wants to send it to the cloud, and create a Word document or Excel spreadsheet, and click Save As, and the default destination is cloud storage. I have been receiving 3 or 4 emails a day for over a month saying my cloud storage is full, and requesting me to renew. The emails are obviously a scam, because they come from what look like private email addresses, the headline showing in my inbox summary mention names I don't know, or gobbledegook (eg tfg.h/uytfgbnyhjm, see below), and the email addresses are all No Reply addresses. They threaten deleting my files and photos, and now say I won't be able to send or receive emails. The only ones I want to stop receiving are these bloody cloud renewal ones. I just direct them to the trash folder. I have tried to cancel the cloud option from my computer and the cloud symbol in the taskbar has a slash through it.  

 

 

 

[facthunter]

I Hope you don't infect US. You can't just click on links. This site has come up unsafe in my new high security set up.  Replaced a Previous computer that took money from us. I had to junk it.. I can't afford THAT again. Nev

[red750]

I don't "just click on links", I delete them. I also have a strong antivirus that rejects and blocks an enormous amount of stuff. I run regular system scans to search for problems. All clear.

[red750]

I pay some of my bills by direct debit, council rates in monthly instalments, Linkt tollroad bill, health, car and house insurance. Phone bill, electricity, gas, water I pay incrementally each pension day by Bpay so I build up a credit. That's why the power bill I got today was $0.00. $23,60 in credit towards the next bill. I find it easier to budget that way. The phone bill is always the same. I have the cheapest plan Vodafone offer, and we never exceed the usage allowance on the plan. My phone and my daughters are on the one plan, she pays NBN and Foxtel.

[rgmwa]

3 hours ago, onetrack said:

Not sure what he did, rgm - but I would expect he checked all those load-bearing capacities and sizes, and he seems to be a pretty switched-on bloke who understands the loads that sheds have to withstand.

I hope he did. He signed off the drawings so he may be taking a risk if he didn’t. On the other hand most modified/re-purposed buildings don’t fail mainly because they never see their full design loads. You could say they rely more on a factor of ignorance than a factor of safety. I bought a hangar built from recycled materials that falls into that category.