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My Personal Technique for Finding Local Drop Addresses in the USA to Receive Packages and USPS Letters.
How to Find Addresses
Using Zillow.com, you can find homes for sale and for rent. When searching for a listing, choose one that has been listed for under 100 days but over 20 days. It has been observed that some homes listed for long periods, even those showing empty rooms in the photos, sometimes have people living there. Look for homes that have either empty rooms or staged environments. Do not send packs to a house that looks like someone is living inside there in the listing photos. Additionally, you should physically check these houses to see if there is any sign of someone living there. Mistakes have been made before — sometimes houses that appear empty on Zillow and were recently posted have someone living there. This could be due to sellers using old photographs or other reasons. It is best to verify it yourself to ensure no one is living there. If you are not able to verify it is empty physically, call the agents phone and ask if the house is ready for a viewing immediately. Do not choose addresses with limited exit points. You want an address that, in the worst case scenario, allows you to disappear quickly. Personally, if I am hitting a store repeatedly I am switching up my zip codes very frequently. Always be on the lookout for patterns you're leaving behind, they are the kiss of death.
Good drop example:
Neighborhood has many exits, door is close to street, empty room in photos.
No-Signature Packages
Choosing a drop to receive packages that require no signature is the simplest to find. These are deliveries you can easily pick up by driving by the house, and there are usually plenty of good options if you live near suburban areas. Suburbs with front doors close to the street allow you to step out of your car and pick up the package very quickly without drawing attention.
Best Practices:
Signature-Required Packages
Packages that require a signature upon delivery can be tricky if you're not paying a friend to receive mail, which is a bad move.
Best Practices:
Populated environment drop example:
Door is close to road, high traffic area with many cars. Perfect for waiting for a signature required pack.
USPS Letters
USPS letters are by far the most tricky to intercept. The addresses you choose MUST NOT have a vacancy slip inside of the box. Choose letter drops that already have spam mail in them. Some people do not bother placing a vacancy slip in their for sale properties mailbox. I have even filled out vacancy slips only for the courier to still not deliver the mail. Success has been achieved with using addresses that already have mail in their boxes.
Best Practices:
Your Vehicle
The car you drive should be generic — no identifiable mods, anything suspicious or obviously illegal — and if you're not carding a rental car to move from drop to drop, you could modify your own vehicle a bit for anonymity. There are plate hiders that exist, but most of them are bulky and look like obvious plate hiders with electronics inside. To prevent this, you could use VanishPlate. These are license plates that are made from PNLC film you can install on your car. The great thing about VanishPlates is that they are very generic — they look similar to normal license plate frames and are transparent in the off state. When you give power to PNLC film, that's when they turn black. There is no reason for a police officer to pull you over with one of these installed and in the transparent state — they look completely normal. I also have a stack of random bumper stickers to swap out at any time.
Plate hider example:
Vusistudios VanishPlate.
Issues I've Ran Into
(c) AID
How to Find Addresses
Using Zillow.com, you can find homes for sale and for rent. When searching for a listing, choose one that has been listed for under 100 days but over 20 days. It has been observed that some homes listed for long periods, even those showing empty rooms in the photos, sometimes have people living there. Look for homes that have either empty rooms or staged environments. Do not send packs to a house that looks like someone is living inside there in the listing photos. Additionally, you should physically check these houses to see if there is any sign of someone living there. Mistakes have been made before — sometimes houses that appear empty on Zillow and were recently posted have someone living there. This could be due to sellers using old photographs or other reasons. It is best to verify it yourself to ensure no one is living there. If you are not able to verify it is empty physically, call the agents phone and ask if the house is ready for a viewing immediately. Do not choose addresses with limited exit points. You want an address that, in the worst case scenario, allows you to disappear quickly. Personally, if I am hitting a store repeatedly I am switching up my zip codes very frequently. Always be on the lookout for patterns you're leaving behind, they are the kiss of death.
Good drop example:
Neighborhood has many exits, door is close to street, empty room in photos.
No-Signature Packages
Choosing a drop to receive packages that require no signature is the simplest to find. These are deliveries you can easily pick up by driving by the house, and there are usually plenty of good options if you live near suburban areas. Suburbs with front doors close to the street allow you to step out of your car and pick up the package very quickly without drawing attention.
Best Practices:
- If you live in a populated area, choose a suburb.
- Avoid low-income housing, as people are more likely to be unemployed and home in the area.
- Avoid high-income areas, where there is likely to be a spouse home.
- Middle-class suburban areas are the sweet spot for using drops, as it is likely all occupants will be working during business hours.
- Avoid picking packages up late at night. You want to blend into the environment, and if it's a suburb, you will blend in perfectly in the middle of the day.
- Avoid sending multiple packages to the same house; use different homes consistently. People will notice you if you constantly pick packages up from a home — it will look suspicious. Apps like Nextdoor exist; these addresses should be single-use.
- If an issue does happen, such as a neighbor chasing you, there are plenty of exits and plenty of turns to take.
- Don't worry about Ring cameras in these environments for single-use pickups — they don't stop anything in progress and will be unlikely to catch your plate (information on the car you drive and how you can avoid trouble with cameras is provided below).
Signature-Required Packages
Packages that require a signature upon delivery can be tricky if you're not paying a friend to receive mail, which is a bad move.
Best Practices:
- Every courier worker is different; some are laid back and accept a note on the door asking to leave the package, and others will only deliver to someone who is physically there. Don't risk losing the pack, show up.
- Look like you are working on something, such as your car. If you're at the drop working on your car like it broke down, no one will see you as suspicious.
- Once the courier comes, you have a legitimate reason to be outside, and if you’re in front of the house or in the driveway, they most likely will just hand you the package — be a social engineer.
- Acting like you’re working on something is also good for avoiding neighbors; you don’t want some old lady calling the police because it looks like someone is being suspicious waiting around.
- For rural environments (not the best option): If your best option for a drop is in a rural environment with not many roads and has houses along the sides of the highway, you are limited. Do not park and sit outside of the house for several hours looking completely out of place. If the home is along a highway, you can predict which way the courier will be coming from by the tracking updates, and wait nearby for the truck, and rush to the drop once you see the truck coming and park in the driveway.
- For populated environments: These are the best for packages requiring signatures. I don’t like sitting in driveways for these — I always like parking out front. For rural environments, I don’t have to worry about an owner or realtor coming to the house asking why I am there; I can just swoop in and out. But for a populated environment, it’s not possible to predict where the courier will be, so you must be at the house until the package arrives. If you’re parked out front working on your car like it broke down, you’ll satisfy any nosy neighbors, and anyone coming to the house legitimately will be thrown off.
Populated environment drop example:
Door is close to road, high traffic area with many cars. Perfect for waiting for a signature required pack.
USPS Letters
USPS letters are by far the most tricky to intercept. The addresses you choose MUST NOT have a vacancy slip inside of the box. Choose letter drops that already have spam mail in them. Some people do not bother placing a vacancy slip in their for sale properties mailbox. I have even filled out vacancy slips only for the courier to still not deliver the mail. Success has been achieved with using addresses that already have mail in their boxes.
Best Practices:
- Since they have no tracking, you have to keep re-visiting the drop to wait until it arrives.
- For these, rural addresses are really effective. By using a rural address, you can avoid prying eyes, especially if the mailbox is far away from other houses.
- I like to choose a drop that is along a long straight road so I can see if anyone is coming from either direction.
- If this is not an option and the only drops you have are in populated environments, do not steal the mail by reaching out of your car. For these addresses, it is best if the mailbox is located at the door, so you will look like anybody walking up to the house — in these cases, you can actually sift through the mail to find yours.
- If you’re driving up to a rural drop's mailbox, it is hard to sift through all of the mail to find yours since there is already junk mail, so you will probably have to steal all of the mail.
Your Vehicle
The car you drive should be generic — no identifiable mods, anything suspicious or obviously illegal — and if you're not carding a rental car to move from drop to drop, you could modify your own vehicle a bit for anonymity. There are plate hiders that exist, but most of them are bulky and look like obvious plate hiders with electronics inside. To prevent this, you could use VanishPlate. These are license plates that are made from PNLC film you can install on your car. The great thing about VanishPlates is that they are very generic — they look similar to normal license plate frames and are transparent in the off state. When you give power to PNLC film, that's when they turn black. There is no reason for a police officer to pull you over with one of these installed and in the transparent state — they look completely normal. I also have a stack of random bumper stickers to swap out at any time.
Plate hider example:
Vusistudios VanishPlate.
Issues I've Ran Into
- Highway addresses: Highway addresses have been an issue for me with UPS and Fedex packages. I run into more package delivery failures with these addresses. For USPS, highway addresses work fine. If I find a drop on Zillow that lists a highway address, I always use the USPS address verification tool to make sure I'm inputting it correctly in the order page (sometimes Zillow addresses will be slightly incorrect). I'm sure USPS would verify it somehow with their own tools, but I like to be certain it's correct. Example: 8901 US Hwy 98, Fairhope, AL 36532
- Missing house numbers: Make sure the drop has visible house numbers on a mailbox or directly on the house. I have had package fail to be delivered because the courier could not find the house numbers.
(c) AID
