Mailbox Bandit

Hi Scott,

A couple of years ago thieves ransacked the mailboxes in our small apartment building. We were all shaken up at the time but I forgot about it until last year when I was knocked back for a car loan. The reason? Someone had been running up buy-now-pay-later loans in my name! It took me months to clear my name — a total nightmare!

Eliza

Hi Eliza,

It was probably just kids messing about.

No, seriously.“Scammers pay kids to go and raid letterboxes” said ACCC chairwoman Delia Rickard in an interview last year.“It is remarkably common”, she declared.

(When I was a kid I delivered junk mail on my BMX for 3 cents a catalogue. I wonder how much the crims pay these days?)

I’ve long thought of my mailbox as being like my mother’s drip tray.

“What’s a drip tray?” my Millennial readers ask.

It’s a tub used to store recycled fat. Really.

Example: the oil from the Sunday lamb roast would become the fat for Tuesday night’s snags.

Sure, it was a thing when my mother was growing up, but times change, Mum! Buy some freaking oil for god sakes, and make sure it’s the activated almond oil stuff that Paleo Pete promises will cure the coronavirus.So why am I paranoid?

Because identity fraud is so prevalent: one in four Aussies have been victims of identity crime at some point in their lives, and collectively it costs us over $2 billion a year, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology.

That’s why, in addition to putting a temporary ban on our credit reports (see last week’s column), Liz and I have set up a joint email for all our bills. The only thing you should be getting in your locked postbox is birthday cards from your aunties … and junk mail delivered by a hard-working kid.

Scott