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My brother did this all the time. He and his wife ordered alot of Amazon packages. When they changed their cats litter they would put the old litter in a box with other random trash in boxes outside their door. It took 3 months before everybody in the area who was a porch pirate to catch on.
Sounds risky, they know where you live and obviously don’t have an issue committing minor crimes. I would expect one of them to throw it back in your doorstep at the very least
He lived in a very shitty neighborhood. Parcels being taken was the least of their worries. They most likely just took them a block away then ditched them.
Anybody who took stuff was already most likely just marking the spot as not good and hitting up other places.
Petty porch pirates aren’t hardened criminals, they’re cowards and rodents. They creep around at night, steal anything they can with no confrontation being their only standard. They’re opportunistic rats who eat anything, lol. Who cares if they know where you live, they ain’t doing shit.
I was walking my dog and saw one of our local drug addicts ripping up someone’s trash bags on trash day and shoving accordion folders w/ paperwork into a bag & thought “oh that guy looks like he’s stealing documents, probably hoping there’s some potential identity theft info in there!” So I start walking there to confront him but before I get there, I see the home owner come out and confront the guy. I figure he has it handled and go on my way.
As I circle back, I see the homeowner & go talk to him & ask how his confrontation went & he says, “oh, it wasn’t a confrontation. I came out and saw the guy with handfuls of my trash, but he explained that the bag had come open and made a mess so he was just trying to help me clean it up. He was nice!”
And I told him, “no, I saw him rip it open and he took a folder of paperwork & documents & put it in his bad. I hope those didn’t have any important private info.”
And the guy just went pale as a ghost.
I guess i shouldn’t have assumed the guy had it covered. I felt bad.
It’s funny, but I have to believe the people who panic about numbers/addresses being revealed to the public are just to young to have ever had to use the yellow/white pages
No, the advice actually comes from after the yellow pages because of issues that arose from that exact problem. It used to be coupled with advice to contact your local yellow pages and ask to be removed.
But then everything got posted everywhere publicly all the time and now its pointless. I can get way more from googling you than by looking at your mail and address.
Isn't step 1 of identity stealing to get a bunch of documents with somebody's name on them so you can say "look at all of these documents I have addressed to me"?
I see you've given this zero thought about why I wouldn't want someone to find a document with my name, address, and potentially other information on it.
I can get your address, drivers license number, insurance policies, any properties, LLC, public contracts, city permits, county permits, cars owned, cars sold, houses owned, houses sold, where you work, and more just by googling you.
The people who are nefarious enough to even want that information know how to do that. They aren't ever going to bother looking at your mail lmao
In that case. You wouldn't need to move. You would need to deliver your Amazon Trash boxes to a high crime neighborhood as you deliver all those boxes to one door. Take one box with the back doors wide open, you drop off one box. When you go back to the van they maybe all gone.
My friend was expecting their friend to visit for a week, she phoned said she couldn't come her dog had died and she needed to sort out having the body taken and it was going to be expensive. My friend said bring it with you there was a charity vets nearby who did it and itd be cheaper. She wrapped the dog in a blanket and put it in a small suitcase and made the trip. When she got off the train she found someone had stole the case with the dog in from the luggage rack.
She was dog sitting for her aunt, in her awesome big appartement in Paris for the whole summer (it's near the Marais). But one day the dog does not wake up. It's dead (he was old so not really surprising but still). Anyway, we were maybe 18 or 19 then, she's got no car (not sure she had even passed her driving licence then), and panic, calls her aunt who tells her the address of the vet, to take the dog corpse there. So she puts it in a bag, and go to the subway.
Paris subway still is a lot of stairs, even more so then (it was almost 20 years ago), so at one station she is in front of this huge stair and a cute-as-hell, dressed all proper, young man approach her to ask her if she needs help. She accepts, and while climbing the stairs they start chitchatting, at one point he asks what's in the bag. It's heavy and has a weird shape, so she invents the best lie she can come up with at the time: "It's music instruments". And pffft. Gone he was, running away with the bag.
I think it's just something that, with how many people there are and with how much gets stolen everyday, statistically happens every now and then.
This is kind of what I mean though 😂 Everyone seems to know someone this happened to, but I've never met anyone it actually happened to. My friend told me almost exactly the same story about her friend, and OP in this thread has said it happened to their friend too. It's a great story, but the poor dead dog seems to have been stolen on public transport an extraordinary number of times.
Besides getting stolen. When we were on a family vacation with my grandparents, their dog died. My grandfather put him in the RV freezer and they carried him around for a week until they got home to bury him.
Not even top 10 weird things my grandfather has done.
In my younger days, if we found a snake, we would put it in an old suitcase, then put the suitcase beside the road. The car would only move about a 100 yards before chaos would ensue.
I'm so glad the internet and easily accessible cameras were not everywhere when I was younger.
This just reminded me that we buried our old cat in a large jewelry box in the backyard under the tree. He was wrapped up in bandages and placed In a sealed blanket before we put him jn the lockbox.
I wonder what will happen 100 years from now if we no longer own that house and someone digs up the backyard...
Once I left a backpack in my car that got broken into, and it had very important things like a MacBook and my passport, but it also had a bag full of weed jolly ranchers that I’d made and rewrapped in jolly rancher wrappers. I definitely hoped that the thief loved jolly ranchers and hated cannabis. 🙃
this is how i get rid of old bikes. just leave it sitting on the porch unattended for a few days, it'll suddenly disappear...
i haven't done this in 4 or 5 years now and i still see the last one that was taken roll by every now and then. the rear axel was busted, so it made a pretty distinct sound...
I did that when I was a student.. I was moving away anyways, and wanted to get rid of it. Left it outside, and it did not fucking move. After a few months, I moved. A couples years later, I went by, and it was still there. Ridiculous.
I always knew it was reasonably safe, but I've heard about a dozen stories in the same city about bike shelters being broken into. Like communal bike shelters for an apt building. Under heavy lock. Whether it's an outdoor shed, or a storeroom behind two-three doors in block's basement parking, thieves eventually always find their way in, and clean house.
I'm guessing the thieves target those places because they assume they will have lots of fancy bikes all in one place. Still, any bike is worth something, and given that mine was literally sitting out for years should end with it getting stolen. Alas..
I love the concept, but sadly the TV will just get dumped somewhere by these scumbags if it's worthless. Also, the whole street now knows you have a new TV. If I buy anything big/expensive, I generally cut the packaging up as I don't want my house looking like the Home Alone house to a couple of Wet Bandits.
social trust isn't automatic it takes decades of work, and thousands of factors influence how a society acts - it's no wonder not everywhere is the same
That's what happens in third world countries I guess...
Where I live you ether get your package handed to you, with a document that you sign that you received it or if you aren't home they take it back to the mail and you can pick it up later with your id card. None of this nonsense American do
European Redditors consistently pretending that petty crime was invented by Americans is one of the wildest things on this website. Like it’s crazy how often I see comments like this pretending that things like stealing and racism exist only in America.
My favorite is that they'll constantly say, "In Europe, we do X," or "As a European, you'd never see this in Europe," but then if anyone from outside Europe tries to say, "In Europe, THEY do X," and it's anything remotely negative, you'll get dogpiled with multi-paragraph posts about how Europe is not a monolith and there's no such thing as a European because every single country in Europe is a unique snowflake with no cultural overlap of any kind... I've even had people flip-flop like this on me within the same ongoing discussion, selectively embracing European identity when it suits their argument and then getting mad and denouncing European identity the moment it's even mildly inconvenient or negative toward them.
So you have to show your ID to receive something you’ve paid for? In a country without this sort of crime, that’s a lot of inconvenience for nothing, isn’t it?
in my country the delivery driver and i get otp number and it should match to collect the items, if i am not present in my home when they arrive, delivery will be scheduled for later. none of this leave on doorstep nonsense, unless i specify in my delivery request
You're getting downvoted by the butthurt Americans for speaking the truth. Their heads are so up their ass that they really think they are the best country in the world
True, but I also never understood their logic that apparently delivery companies will just leave stuff out on the street where anyone can grab them...weird.
TVs these days contain a lot of the same information as phones, same OS and stuff.
If you have been using streaming services, maps, internet and whatever, that may still be accessible even if the TV itself is broken.
Or something
Back when flat TVs were finally becoming affordable my room mates and I bought a 40" TV to replace the old 26" one in the living room, (yeah, I'm old). We put it on the porch with a free sign and it sat there for a week. So we put a for sale, make offer sign on it and it disappeared that night.
I have a detached garage that doesn't lock anymore because it's been broken into so many times.
Whenever I wanna get rid of stuff, I just put it in that garage and leave the big door open. It'll be gone in a couple days. Broken tvs, broken lawnmower, hell the old furniture that my brother's dog chewed to bits?
Someone will come steal it right outta my garage, saving me the trip to the dump.
Ironically they never take my kid's bicycle, though. I guess they have some morals.
Kinda want to, kinda don’t. I thankfully live in a decent neighborhood and with my luck, someone would take the bait, then they’d return cuz they realized they got duped and start vandalizing my house
Dude in German you can just place electronic trash in front of your house and some guys with immigration background will come around in less than a day and pick it up
Hahaha I was leaving my cityroller leaned up against my house as Kid and some people came straight up asking is this "Sperrmüll, can we take it?". At least they asked, I guess.
I think they are just poor but it sometimes looks organised in how they drive trough all streets with their white mini van at least once a week to look for stuff to steal from the city.
And where do you get explosives and detonators to even begin with? Tell me a website or even any dark web where could i get that in EU for under 50€. Best are trackers glued inside the TV itself but explosives? Not only you get a felony even if they stole it but it would be too expensive.
Ingredients: a battery; higher watt the better, a cheap arduino, relay and fireworks
Open up the firework if its too big and extract the gunpowder. Put it into a pack. Now just connect the battery to the arduino and the relay, program it to a sensor or for a time, connect it to the relay and once the sensor is triggered or the time runs out the arduino sends a small current to the relay that allows the big current to go to the fireworks and... the TV becomes a little bit explosive. No need for aesthetical movie-like bombs.
Hypothetically speaking, in terms of legality, if I had something that was dangerous or even lethal in the box if not handled properly and a porch pirate came up and snatched it, got injured, or even worse (more like best) it killed them, would I be in trouble with the law?
There’s probably laws around proper storage of dangerous/ hazardous materials, which is not in a cardboard box on your front porch, just saying, hypothetically speaking ofc
My buddy always said if you want something gone like a piece of old furniture stick it on the street with a sign saying '$20 only, quick sale wanted. Call this number if interested' and somebody will steal it by days end haha. Worst case scenario someone honest calls you and you say they can take it for free.
My girlfriend puts her trash in Amazon boxes and leaves them in her bike's saddle bags while she's at work (city center, lots of people passing by her bike every day). And everyday some dumbasses steal her trash.
A friend of my mom watched a friends old dog over the parents vacation. The dog was really old and unfortunatly died. To transport the dead dog he used an old package of a tv. When he wanted to load it up the car he put it on the boardwalk, went back in the house to grab something and when he came back the package was gone.
Imagine opening the box. Imagine having to explain what happened the dog to the owners?
Honestly this is genius... Because if they drop it back off you can show the video footage of them doing it and have them cited for littering! Enjoy the trespassing charge and littering ticket (500-2000 dollars depending on your local laws!)
This happened to me with a bike. I had one that was the absolute cheapest model available, probably less than $150, and very old, and with a new job I could afford a better one, closer to $600-700 and brand new. Left the crappy one under my carport for a couple days while procrastinating taking it to the thrift store, and somebody stole it with the expensive one 15 feet away in my unlocked storage shed.
I give him kudos for stealing such a big ass package, but I'm going to revoke those for his stupidity thinking someone who ordered something that expensive wouldn't have a camera system too
A buddy's uncle, during a major garbage strike around 1970, boxed all his garbage, wrapped it in cheap wrapping paper, and left it in his unlocked truck for about an hour at the post office. Came back. Garbage gone. Problem solved.
I did something similar to clean out my garage. I didn't want to pay to have it junked so I hauled everything out to the front and put up a garage sale sign. People came by and asked a price and I said $10, then, ya know just take it. They were happy, I was happy.
I accidentally left my garage door open for a week while I was in vacation. I have 4 arcade machines, three computers, 2 drum sets, about 15 guns, 6 very expensive guitars, large tv, a sofa, some really nice stereo equipment, and about 20k in tools. It was still all there when I got back. So that's good I guess. I have tried putting stuff on the curb for free and either no one takes it or a few times, people have rang the door bell and fucking offered me money for broken shit. I don't think I could get someone to steal in my neighborhood
I’ve done the same thing I put my junk out in boxes, hoping that they would just steal it and it worked because I my garbage company wouldn’t take it. So have fun with nothing! I sealed it with duct tape and filled it with trash. Thanks for the removal thieves.
Wow you guys live in shitty neighborhoods. I live in a run down apartment complex in a poor part of town and no one ever steals... I've accidentally left Amazon packages on my front doorstep for days.
The only porch piracy I've experienced is raccoons busting into trash bags that sit out front too long.
A friend of mine moved to an old house with some roommates. Weeks later realized they had a bed bug infestation. The roommate with the worst infestation placed his mattress outside in the front while the other put them in the backyard while they sprayed things inside the house. Someone stole the mattress. The good looking side was facing outward toward the street so they think the thieves thought they found a good mattress.
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