
Hacking Business Reply Mail - dpapathanasiou
http://denis.papathanasiou.org/2014/05/30/hacking-business-reply-mail-is-this-legal/
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mberg
Nice one! Try this one. When I was living in NY, I'd always want to bring a
magazine for the long subway ride downtown. So one day I took one of the
magazines that get delivered to my home and enjoyed the read on the way
downtown. When I got to my destination I'd just pop the magazine in the
nearest mailbox. Usually a day later it would delivered back safely back home
to be read another day. I've done this dozens of times without fail.

~~~
mrbill
I moved from Austin to Houston almost ten years ago. Was good friends with my
Austin mailman, who lived down the block.

About a month after we moved, I got a package in the mail - a cardboard
mailing tube, containing a poster, that I'd bought online a couple of years
before but never gotten around to putting up. But how did it end up back in
the mail?

It turns out that during one of our move trips, the poster was left leaning
against the outside wall on the front porch at the Austin house, next to the
mailbox.

Our mailman saw it, assumed that it had been (recently) delivered by another
postman on his day off, and he knew that we had a forwarding order in place.
So he put the poster back in the system with our Houston address on it (being
properly packaged and all) and I got it a few days later.

~~~
Zancarius
This story goes to show that sometimes the most important "hacking" of any
system is to be in good graces with the people running it.

~~~
Fuzzwah
Or to be able to social engineer your way into making them think you're in the
good graces.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Being honestly nice is easier than faking it.

------
panarky
Back in the day, people would use business reply mail to get a small amount of
revenge on companies that wronged them.

1\. Wrap a cinderblock in brown paper

2\. Tape a business reply envelope to the top of the package

3\. Drop off the package at a mailbox or post office

4\. Recipient pays first-class postage

I don't know if it's true, but I heard of people mailing used truck tires and
big boxes of rocks or bricks this way.

Probably wouldn't work today, since anti-terror regulations require
identification for packages above given dimensions.

~~~
eli
It didn't work then either. You were just annoying the postal workers.

[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/566/can-i-mail-a-
br...](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/566/can-i-mail-a-brick-back-
to-a-junk-mail-firm-using-the-business-reply-envelope)

~~~
andrewflnr
But it'll still work if I stuff the envelope full of crap, right? Along with,
of course, a politely worded request to take me off their list.

~~~
eli
If your intent is just to stop getting junk mail, this will do it:
[https://www.dmachoice.org/register.php](https://www.dmachoice.org/register.php)

~~~
Karunamon
Doesn't work when you have persistent companies who won't take the hint and
stop mailing you even after being on that list and even after calling them and
even after replying to the twelfth or so missive saying you're not interested.

I had to take this tack with Good Sam (an RV "services" company, insurance and
maintenance and such) who wouldn't get lost. Once after about 3 or 4 instances
of being told to GTFO, they sent me this large manilla-envelope thing with a
similarly sized reply envelope.

I shredded everything but the reply envelope into confetti, emptied my
shredder (few days worth of stuff) into the envelope, threw a few pennies in
there to increase the weight, and wrote on a sheet of paper "TAKE ME OFF YOUR
LIST".

Haven't received anything since then. Perhaps coincidental, perhaps not, but
so very satisfying.

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ChuckMcM
A realtor I knew used this to send loan documents to the bank. She would just
use clear tape and tape the envelope on top of the big fat manilla envelope of
papers and drop it in the mail. Clearly the postage was different but the post
office seemed to process it fine.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
Actually, the post office may have noticed, but they probably don't care,
since I'm not really cheating them out of revenue; they just charge Fidelity
as if the envelope were legitimate.

Only Fidelity might complain, but they created these postage-free envelopes so
customers like me would send them deposits, so they probably don't care,
either.

It was a just a fun thing to try, and great to see that it worked!

~~~
ceejayoz
If anything, it's saving Fidelity the expense of buying, printing, and
distributing envelopes.

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jack-r-abbit
I've wondered for a long time if one could "hack" (or more like "exploit" or
"cheat") the "Return To Sender" feature of the USPS to get free postage.
Suppose I want to send a letter to John Doe without paying postage. I address
the envelope to my own address and use John's address as the from address. I
don't put a stamp on it. Without postage, the USPS should not deliver it to me
and should return it to the sender for proper postage. BAM! John gets my
letter.

~~~
alcari
I believe that's referred to as "mail fraud".

~~~
jack-r-abbit
LOL... you are probably right.

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jasoncartwright
Posting cheques! How quaint. Do your financial institutions not support
electronic money transfers?

~~~
joezydeco
A lot of businesses in America transfer funds electronically with a "pull"
type of system. You give the business the bank account number of _your_
account and they withdraw the funds. If the business does not offer this, then
you need to send them the number on a piece of paper, such as a cheque.

This differs from European systems where businesses post incoming bank account
numbers and customers "push" it from their banks to the business via a
transfer form (which, if I recall correctly, you need to fill and deliver to
the bank or post online, correct?)

~~~
msandford
Pull systems are THE WORST because you're putting 100% trust in the party
you've given your account number to. I have multiple friends who have had
various parties withdraw payments for loans in excess of what they were
supposed to withdraw which put them in a serious financial predicament.

One in particular set all his bills up on auto-pay such that he didn't have to
pay terribly close attention. His government-backed student loan payment took
out something like 5x what it was supposed to and as a result he missed two
months worth of payments (again because he didn't check regularly) and got
quite a few other companies rather pissed off. And he had no recourse with the
student loan folks.

After hearing about that kind of bullshit (I too am mostly setup for auto-pay)
I got a second account with a totally separate bank which I occasionally
deposit a few grand in for the companies that won't accept credit card payment
for their services. This way even if one of them goes rogue and siphons the
account dry they can't take me for more much more than is in the account. It
doesn't protect me against someone going after my other accounts using
judicial means, but it does provide a substantially higher barrier and gives
me some peace of mind.

~~~
joezydeco
There are some other downsides to auto-debit, even when it's working 100%.
Case in point: a woman was found dead in her home after six years. Her auto-
debit kept the mortgage and all utilities paid...until the money ran out.

[http://wnep.com/2014/03/07/auto-pay-bills-hide-womans-
death-...](http://wnep.com/2014/03/07/auto-pay-bills-hide-womans-death-for-
six-years/)

------
azunds
Does it work if you send it to your own address?

~~~
dpapathanasiou
No, of course not.

The permit number corresponds to a specific address.

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free2rhyme214
I wonder if this guy is from the bay area. Because there's a Muji in SF and
downtown San Jose.

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honoredb
Not particularly unethical as described, but I'd imagine this is technically a
federal crime.

------
aashishkoirala
Link is dead.

------
rapcal
404...

------
comrade1
This brings up an embarrassment I have, being an american that's moved to
Europe. I've had colleagues that have worked short-term in the u.s. and when
they receive a 'check' from their workplace they think it's the most
fascinating, interesting thing. A check! It's almost like they're holding the
money in their hands... (their words, not mine)

I don't think my bank even has checks - at least they're not a standard enough
feature that they mention them.

Thinking about it though, they did let me deposit a check from the u.s. once.
It took about three works for it to go through. Wire transfers to anywhere in
the world (I regularly send money to the u.s. and India) go through in two or
three days.

In fact, the check I deposited was about $50K, so it's understandable it took
awhile, but a wire transfer I received from the u.s. for the same exact amount
only took two days.

So, why use checks?

We have a system where every bill is payable by bank transfer, and the bill
you receive only contains the bank transfer information.

~~~
th0br0
I think the main charm of checks are a certain untraceability. E.g. I was once
in the states and received a check. As I was not a customer of any bank there,
there was no easy way for me to cash it in. Solution: go to a friend's bank
with him in tow so that he'd essentially cash it in but giving me all the
money.

~~~
ugexe
This could easily get your friend in tax trouble. If you need to cash a check
and you don't have a bank account you typically go to the bank that issued the
check and cash it there.

