Code § 1708, a longstanding law that tacks on the possibility of a fine or imprisonment for tampering with mail that belongs to someone else.Īre the police going to show up at your door because you tossed out a letter addressed to a neighbor or a previous tenant or homeowner? Probably not. To understand why, you have to look at U.S. Or is it?Īs it turns out, opening or throwing out mail that isn’t yours is illegal, and can be punishable by a misdemeanor or felony charge. Of course, you’re not the USPS, so mail that wrongly ends up at your address isn’t your problem. Postal Service, accounting for about 4.56% of the outbound volume of all mail and $1.3 billion in wasted processing fees. Undeliverable-as-addressed (UAA) mail-which includes mail that is addressed to an individual, family or business that has moved-is a costly problem for the U.S. You’ve got mail that isn’t yours: now what? Here’s what to know about handling mail that’s intended for someone else, plus how to help ensure that your own mail doesn’t end up in someone else’s home-or recycling bin. And while it might be tempting to just toss the letter in the recycling bin and wash your hands of the whole issue, there are some potential consequences to doing so (including possible felony charges, yikes). In many cases, the mail is addressed to one of your neighbors, which makes the issue of what to do with mail that isn’t yours easy to solve-you just walk it over to their door.īut what do you do if you’re renting and the mail is addressed to a previous tenant? Or what happens if it’s addressed to a neighbor but you forget to bring it to them? Coming across mail that isn’t yours puts the onus on you to work out a solution, regardless of whether or not it’s a task you signed up for. It’s probably happened to all of us at some point: you go to your mailbox, grab the stack, sort through it, and realize that one or more pieces of mail aren’t actually addressed to you.

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