Not so long ago, I moved to a new flat. Since I still needed to receive postal mail sent to my old address, I chose to use the mail forwarding service of the German post company.
Requesting your mail to be forwarded can be done easily via the homepage of the German post company: You need to give your old address, the address that the mail should be forwarded to, as well as your bank account number from which the service fee will be withdrawn automatically.
Simple enough. Even for someone who isn't you.
There have been quite a few cases of fraudulent use of this service in the past, most often committed by angry ex-partners or particularly creepy stalkers. But there have also been a few cases already where a fraudster had someone's mail rerouted just in time to receive new debit cards, credit cards, the corresponding PINs, and all kinds of other stuff to cause major financial damage with.
Having realized that this forwarding service might therefore constitute a minor security issue, the German post company decided to prevent this kind of fraud by sending an information letter to the original address whenever a mail forwarding request is received, saying something along the lines: "In order to prevent fraud, we are hereby informing you that a mail forwarding service has been requested for your address, and that from now on all your postal mail will be forwarded to the new address given below. If you did not initiate this yourself, please contact us immediately." This ensures that in case of an illegitimate request, the victim is at least aware of the situation and can take steps to cancel the forwarding service and possibly prosecute the offender.
Guess what?
That information letter was forwarded to my new address.
-- Birgit
No comments:
Post a Comment