A Southern California woman fed up with her packages getting stolen out of her post office box sent an Apple AirTag to the address and cleverly tracked down the suspected thief, police said.

The woman had had several items stolen from her mailbox at the Los Alamos Post Office already when she thought of the idea, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday. Apple’s $29 AirTags have become popular items since their 2021 release, helping users keep tabs on the location of anything from their lost keys to wallets and luggage.

On Monday morning, sheriff’s deputies were called to the post office where the woman told officials her mail had been stolen again — including the package with the AirTag.

  • Darkassassin07
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    3 months ago

    The last town I lived in didn’t do door-to-door mail for ANYONE. If you want your mail, come to the post office.

    Private carriers like Fedex/Purolator are a bit more accommodating, but tracking down your regular letter mail was your problem.

    The post office worker’s would get super pissed off if you received mail with your actual address on it instead of the PO box too. Taking 10sec to type it into the computer to match street address with PO box was the end of the world apparently…

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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      3 months ago

      It depends on where you are. The commercial carriers often will use USPS as the “last mile” carrier to send stuff too. People dump on the US postal system (rightly so for a lot of things) but it really is an incredible system, when it works. And a lot of that is the government side to blame, making it more costly and inefficient where it could be better.

      • aramis87@fedia.io
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        3 months ago

        DeJoy is still in office actually, and is planning to further degrade service as soon as the election passes.

    • JWBananas@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Purolator

      TIL there is a logistics/shipping company that shares a name with an oil filter manufacturer.