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Do not open it, and do not throw it away. Opening someone else's mail is a federal offense in both the United States and Canada. For occasional mixups, write a short note to your carrier and bundle the pieces back into the mailbox. If it keeps happening, the fix is different: something in your delivery route is wrong, and you need to report it.
The simplest correct move: put it back in the outgoing mail with a short note. Write your note on a sticky note or a slip of paper, not on the envelope itself; the envelope already has routing barcodes, and extra markings confuse the sorters. Something like "delivered to 142 by mistake, intended for 124" is enough. Raise the flag or leave it where your carrier picks up outgoing mail. Your carrier sees it the next round and re-delivers it.
If you happen to know the neighbor, handing it to them directly is fine and often faster. What you must not do is put it in their mailbox yourself: in the U.S., only authorized postal personnel may deposit items in a mailbox, even with a stamp on it. Handing it to the person is legal; opening their box is not.
| Situation | Correct response | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Occasional wrong-address letter | Note to carrier, back into outgoing mail; or hand to the neighbor directly | Quick, and it reaches the right person fastest |
| Mail for a former resident of your address | Write "not at this address" on the piece and return it to the mail stream | This marking tells the carrier to stop delivering that name here |
| It happens every week or two | Report the pattern to the carrier or post office: something systematic is wrong | One-off mixups are human error; patterns are a routing or casing problem |
| Someone opened and used mail meant for you | Report it: USPS Postal Inspection Service, or Canada Post security | Opening mail addressed to someone else is a federal offense |
Because it is the one marking carriers actually act on. "Not at this address" is reserved for mail addressed to someone who no longer lives at your address: a former tenant, the previous owner. When the carrier sees it, they pull that name from your delivery point, and the flow stops. Writing it on a letter for your neighbor at a different address does nothing, because the carrier will just see a deliverable address and deliver it there again.
For the ongoing-neighbor problem, the usual causes are mundane. Similar street numbers on parallel streets, a route split that shuffled your block, or a substitute carrier unfamiliar with the route. When you report it, be specific: dates, how often, and the addresses involved. "Three letters for 124 Elm in the last month, all addressed correctly" gives the post office something to fix. Vague complaints get vague shrugs.
In the United States, opening mail addressed to someone else is a federal offense under 18 U.S. Code 1708, and it applies whether you did it on purpose or "by accident" and kept reading. Throwing someone's mail away is also illegal. The law's protection extends to the period after delivery: once it lands in your box addressed to another person, you are a temporary custodian, not the owner.
Canada's rules are parallel: opening mail directed to another person is an offense under the Canada Post Corporation Act. The practical point in both countries is the same. Treat every piece of someone else's mail like a hot potato: touch it only to pass it along, unopened, to the carrier or the right person.
One last scenario people ask about: mail for someone who died. If you are handling an estate, you cannot just keep opening their mail. Set up proper mail handling through the estate: in the U.S., USPS will forward a deceased person's mail to the executor with the right documentation; in Canada, Canada Post offers a similar deceased-mail service. That keeps everything legal and keeps bills and notices from going missing.
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