Creepy UPS identity confirmation

As part of our never ending kitchen update, we ordered some pine shelves. Apparently they got stolen off of our front porch. Williams-Sonoma kindly replaced them, but I was nervous as all get out waiting for them to arrive. After waiting for a backorder delay, the box I retrieve from the porch is OPEN. I guess the thieves took a look and thought "Oh no, not that again!" and left it.

After installing the shelves, we decide to order another piece of the same shelving. This time I change the delivery address to Brewer's office for security. After another funky backorder delay, we receive tracking indicating that they are scheduled for delivery Christmas Eve. Which is fine, but it might be easier to pick them up at will call at UPS.

So I try to sign up for the nifty UPS "My Choice" which lets users log in and change delivery and has some other nifty features. In the process of doing that, I get to an identity verification screen that asks me to select people I am "closely affiliated with" and to select streets where I have lived which go back to the early 1980s. Even creepier is that the street list includes a residence where my ex-husband lived after we got divorced.

The creepiest yet is that the third question asks me to confirm the birth month of my ex-husband's ex-wife!

I'm just going to let them deliver the package, and let it go at that.

Here is another slightly creepy thing. When UPS drops a package off, the GPS location of the drop off it noted. I had never heard of this until this fall. I did not receive a delivery as expected. (Side note, I get UPS almost every day, and my driver is super. He gave me the local dispatch number to use in special situations until the premise of "don't tell them where you got the number" and not to abuse it) anyway....so I called dispatch and they looked up my package on their end. I forget why I didn t call the 800# but there was a reason. They can see in google earth where it was dropped off!!!! She described the location to me to confirm it was not my house. We determined it was delivered four blocks away and they made the sub driver who had done the misdelivery go and get it.

That doesn't sound creepy to me. That sounds like a great thing. Otherwise you might never find your package and there would be no way to prove it wasn't dropped off at your place.

I basically agree- it's just a little creepy too me a) that we don't know all the technology that is being used and b) how pervasive it is.

Malkin - I just went through that UPS My Choice program sign-up yesterday as well and was a little creeped out also. I added several household members. For my daughter, they asked about her brother's (my son's) year of high school graduation, they asked about cars that we had owned, etc. What it drove home to me is that all this info is out there on the internet. There's no hiding out anymore. UPS knows all this stuff already - cars, addresses, birth dates (or they wouldn't have put it in their multiple choice answers) - and with them, many other companies too.

That's run by one of the big credit reporting agencies, I forget which. It's the same one the USPS and the health care exchange use.

I mean ... none of this is new. The only thing that's new is that since all the hoopla over the past year, police agencies have been much more public about using people's phone history to track where they have been in the past. I keep my GPS off as a matter of course ... although obviously they could turn it on remotely if they wanted ... and there's still the cell tower triangulation to give ballpark locations.

Hnmm, I don't know what UPS My Choice is. I use one of the commercial services, My UPS. (ups.com) username/password is it.

I had a package stolen off my porch, too. Apparently there are people who follow delivery trucks specifically for that purpose. I now have packages held for pickup.

I hold most of mine also, because our lane won't take a lot of truck traffic. UPS My Choice (and the equivalent FedEx service, I forget what it's called - although FedEx will only hold express parcels, not ground) - is the only way I know ahead of time that a parcel is coming so that I can have it held. Or just this week, I got notice that an unexpected parcel was coming to the wrong address. I could've redirected it myself if I'd paid for it, but I was able to contact the shipper and get them to redirect it.


To anyone with an interest in surveillance, two books by James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace (1982) and The Shadow Factory (2009) are a great place to start. But that's a whole different thing from corporate data mining. I mean, here we all are on an internet forum ... some of us take some basic steps to protect our privacy from blunt instruments, but I'm sure TE makes good use of our data (as they should! for hosting this place).

on the topic of crazy security stuff - this happened yesterday and I'm still freaked out about it, in a not-good way:

I manage a bank account for my sister who is a nun in retreat. All the deposits and withdrawals are on automatic, so I don't check it a lot. I figured with the holiday season and rampant electronic theft going on I should probably take a look at it. I don't log in a lot, so the site came up the extra security questions, as it should. I had some trouble with the answer as the ones I had noted weren't working, and ended up calling the bank at the number they give if you have login trouble. It is a very small local bank, so I know I am calling someone at the bank and not a call center.

I explained that I was having issues, she verified me with a user name and birthday, and then when I was going over the answers to the security questions with her, she was giving me the answers! As is, "do you have XXXXX for the best mans' last name?", and "do you have XXXX for your childhood best friend?" WTF? The issue was corrected - I had noted first name not last name for the last name question but still.....yikes. I think I'm going have a chat with them.

malkin…if the people you knew question were employers or relatives then those, the addresses and birth dates (even ex's) were common credit report info.

Seriously, how many people know the birthday of their ex-spouse's ex-spouse?

I wouldn't care to know :)….but then no legal ex's involved in my life….yet

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Originally Posted by Irulan

I explained that I was having issues, she verified me with a user name and birthday, and then when I was going over the answers to the security questions with her, she was giving me the answers! As is, "do you have XXXXX for the best mans' last name?", and "do you have XXXX for your childhood best friend?" WTF? The issue was corrected - I had noted first name not last name for the last name question but still.....yikes. I think I'm going have a chat with them.

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It was things like this for which I recently changed banks. After several attempts at pointing their security problems to no avail, I decided I couldn't trust them. The sad part is that the new bank may not be any better, but so far, they haven't done any obviously dumb things.

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Seriously, how many people know the birthday of their ex-spouse's ex-spouse?

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I have been divorced for more than 20 years, yet my ex will still shows up on these reports. Consequently, when sites that use the data list "associated" people, his current wife shows up. If I were you, I'd pull my credit report at this point to make sure that your ex's debt is not on your report. The association seems to last, but you want to make sure that there is no debt linkage.

But I had to fill out one of those Q&A's recently for something and, yes, I found it creepy. And I tend to keep a relatively low internet profile.

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Originally Posted by OakLeaf

That's run by one of the big credit reporting agencies, I forget which.

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Yes, and for some reason I thought that was tied to your SSN, which I did NOT supply to UPS My Choice. That's why the questions surprised me.

hmmmmm I didn't have to go through all of that weirdness when I signed up...

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Originally Posted by OakLeaf

That's run by one of the big credit reporting agencies, I forget which. It's the same one the USPS and the health care exchange use.

I mean ... none of this is new. The only thing that's new is that since all the hoopla over the past year, police agencies have been much more public about using people's phone history to track where they have been in the past. I keep my GPS off as a matter of course ... although obviously they could turn it on remotely if they wanted ... and there's still the cell tower triangulation to give ballpark locations.

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I ended up with a glitch verifying my identity through the healthcare exchange. The credit reporting agency had incorrect information about me so I did not answer the questions correctly. They also had odd information about my spouse but I managed to guess what they really wanted and get him signed up. I ended up having to mail in a copy of my drivers license to sign up.

My problem is having homes in more than one state. The credit reporting agency just doesn't know where we live. :)

I generaly don't worry about this stuff; I accept the surveillence stuff as, well, the price we pay for not getting the sh*t bombed out of us. But, DH is vigilant about checking all of our stuff, which is good. He's the one whose Amex card has been breached at least 5 times, mostly because he uses it so much! We use a password security system that generates random passwords for everything we do and I don't have to remember them. Well, almost everything. Some things I like to control!
But... many years ago, before the advent of anything to do with a computer (1978?) I applied for a very small loan from my credit union, so I could finish my masters degree. I was denied because they said I owed Sears 300.00 (a lot of money then). It turns out, the credit reporting agency had my parents' Sears account listed under my name. My dad and I have the same first 3 numbers in our SSNs and our names begin with the same first 3 letters. My dad went to the credit bureau and threatened a lawsuit. They removed the balance from my report, and magically, Desert Schools Federal Credit Union gave me the measly 300.00.

Those kinds of questions aren't just used by UPS. We use a system when a student is taking a remote exam online that asks them for those sorts of answers also and the time limit they have to type the answers in is short. There is also a web camera watching them.

I've refused to have anything delivered by UPS since they slapped a 75% "customs brokerage fee" on a $100 item I ordered from an American site some years ago. They had me over a barrel, or rather my husband, as he was at home when it arrived. As I had little experience of buying from other countries at that time, I didn't know it was way over the top and it just put me off from buying items from non-Canadian sites.
When I ordered a $500 bike frame from an American online site recently it was delivered by normal post and the customs charges were only 10%, so UPS was definitely gouging. If I'd known there was a class action suit against them for that very reason, I'd have tried to take part, I think.