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Treat it as identity theft and move fast. If you got a change-of-address confirmation you did not request, someone may have filed a fraudulent forwarding order to redirect your mail and harvest account numbers. Cancel the order immediately, report it to the postal inspectors, put a fraud alert on your credit files, and watch for missing bank, tax, and government mail.
This is general information, not legal advice.
When a forwarding order is filed, USPS mails a confirmation letter to both the old address and the new address. That is the safeguard working as designed: you are the one at the old address, and the letter is the system's way of tipping you off. The fraudster is counting on you ignoring it or not checking your mail promptly. Do the opposite.
The first thing to confirm is that the order is really bogus and not something a family member filed on your behalf, such as a spouse consolidating mail. Ask the household. If nobody knows anything about it, assume fraud.
| Step | What to do | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cancel the forwarding order through USPS right away (online move tool or in person at the post office) | Every day the order runs, more of your mail lands in someone else's hands |
| 2 | Report the fraud to the USPS Inspection Service | Mail fraud is a federal offense; inspectors track patterns and repeat offenders |
| 3 | Put a fraud alert or credit freeze on your credit files | Stolen mail is often the first step toward opening accounts in your name |
| 4 | File a report with the FTC identity-theft site and your local police | Creates the paper trail lenders and agencies will ask for later |
| 5 | Call your bank, card issuers, and any agency you expect mail from | They can flag your accounts and re-send anything that was redirected |
The thief files a change of address online, which requires passing an identity-verification step. Fraudsters who have gathered enough of your personal details (name, old address, maybe a date of birth from a data breach) can sometimes get through it. Once forwarding starts, every check, replacement card, benefits letter, and tax document that would have come to your mailbox now goes to an address the thief controls.
Two things make this scam especially nasty. First, the victim often does not notice anything is missing, because the mail is not late: it simply never arrives. Second, the forwarding order also intercepts the confirmation letter sent to the old address only if the thief starts collecting the old mailbox too. If you caught the confirmation, you caught the scam early, which is the best-case version of this story.
Fraudulent orders often appear ahead of mail-heavy seasons: tax time (W-2s and 1099s), benefit enrollment windows, or when a new card would be mailed. Thieves also tend to use short forwarding windows, a few weeks, grab what they can, then let the order lapse. That is another reason to report fast: the forwarding trail may still be active when investigators look.
The same fraud happens with Canada Post's Mail Forwarding service. In Canada the filing process involves an identity-verification step at a retail outlet, which makes online-only fraud harder, but it is not impossible. If you get a Canada Post forwarding confirmation you did not request, cancel it through Canada Post, report it, and contact the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre plus your bank. The Equifax/TransUnion fraud-alert advice applies in Canada too.
Check your mail daily for anything you expected but never got: new cards, PINs, account statements, government notices. Review your credit reports for accounts you did not open. Consider signing up for USPS Informed Delivery (or Canada Post's delivery notifications) so you can see images of what is supposed to arrive and notice gaps immediately. If your mailbox is the weak point, a locking mailbox is a cheap one-time fix that blocks this whole class of fraud.
And if the fraudulent order was filed at a physical post office, ask about the ID that was presented. Clerks are trained to check identification, and a report of what was shown can help investigators.
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