Mail theft: what to do if your mail was stolen

Most missing mail is just slow, not stolen — a piece sitting at a sorting facility, a misdelivered neighbor mix-up, a holiday backlog. But mail theft does happen, and it is worth knowing the real signs and the right steps, rather than guessing.

Signs your mail may have been stolen

• Mail stops arriving. Nothing at all for several days in a row, when you normally get something daily, especially if a neighbor mentions their mail is arriving fine.
• Specific expected pieces never show up. A check you know was mailed to you, a new card you were told was sent, a bill you get every month — gone, with no delivery scan and no obvious delay elsewhere.
• A tampered mailbox. A broken lock, a pried-open door, or a cluster box unit that looks forced. Apartment and cluster mailboxes are common targets because one break-in exposes many households at once.
• Unexpected account or credit activity. A card issuer confirms they mailed something you never received, a "your address was changed" notice you did not request, a new account or hard credit inquiry you do not recognize, or a check clearing with a signature or amount that is not yours.

One of these alone is often nothing. Missing mail plus unexplained account activity is the pattern worth acting on.

What to do

1. Report it to the USPS Postal Inspection Service. Mail theft is a federal crime, and the Postal Inspection Service — not your local post office window — is the agency that investigates it. Report what is missing and when you noticed.
2. File a police report if fraud is involved. If you find unauthorized charges, new accounts, or an altered check, file a report with your local police department. Banks, card issuers, and credit bureaus commonly require a police report number before they will reverse charges or open a fraud case.
3. Contact affected financial institutions right away. Tell your bank or card issuer exactly what may have been in the mail — a check, a new card, an account statement — so they can flag the account, watch for fraud, or place a stop payment before a stolen check clears.
4. Consider a fraud alert or credit freeze. If your account number, Social Security number, or other identifying details may have been exposed, a fraud alert or freeze with the credit bureaus makes it harder for anyone to open new credit in your name while you sort things out.

Prevention: what actually helps

A locked mailbox and picking up mail promptly cut down on the easiest, most opportunistic theft — mail sitting visible and unattended is what gets taken. Neither is foolproof, though, and neither tells you whether something you sent actually reached the other end.

That is the specific gap tracked mail closes. For anything you would be upset to lose — a signed check, a legal notice, a document with an account number on it — sending it as Certified Mail ($12.99) gives it a tracking number and a delivery record, so if it does not arrive you find out from a missing scan, not from a stolen-mail scare weeks later. Add the electronic Return Receipt ($14.99 total) if you also need a signature on record. It will not stop theft from happening, but it removes the uncertainty a theft scare creates: you know exactly where the piece is, and exactly when — or whether — it was delivered.

Related: how Certified Mail tracking works, filing a USPS missing mail claim, or what Certified Mail actually is.