Data Security, or UPS is a Fucking Asshole

A lot of my friends think that I am weird for mostly shipping shit to work and amazon lockers.  I began thinking I was weird to, so I started having things shipped to my apartment.  Turns out, the delivery guys don't have too much trouble getting in the building, even though I'm not there to let them in myself.  I'm guessing they have more than one package to deliver, and another resident (or the office) lets them in.

This breaks down when some asshole requires a signature.

First, it was a $10 usb cable for a samsung galaxy tab that I couldn't find in stores.  Naturally, they attempted to deliver it three times and I wasn't there so the only chance was to go pick it up at the depot.  I was tempted to let it be returned to the sender out of spite (and hopefully to cost the merchant money, hopefully convincing them that requiring a signature is a poor decision) however I was late for work and wanted a good excuse one day so I picked it up.  That was FedEx.  Not too bad.

Then comes UPS.  Fucking UPS.  This package was actually valuable.  First, I rescheduled the last delivery to be today, because I had off work, so I was able to sit around all day doing nothing but waiting for a package.  I didn't even shower, because the delivery asshat might show up during those twenty minutes.

Periodically, I rechecked the delivery status, only to discover that the final attempt had been made an hour prior to my checking.  Strange--I never heard my buzzer.  Or knocking.  Also:  its not even a fucking saturday.  I've heard all kinds of nightmare stories about people not getting packages on saturdays--including people who go so far as to actually sit outside their house only to see the truck drive past without stopping.  I would have waited outside, but there was absolutely no indication when they were going to attempt to deliver it, and I didn't want to sit around for 12 hours, and, also, the time required to get into the building to use the bathroom or get food would be long enough for the deliveryman to show up, knock twice, and leave.  So.

At this point we are still within acceptable levels.  Now is where the story becomes infuriating.  The website didn't list a place to pick up the package.  I started a customer service chat with a rep that took ridiculously long to respond, and they told me I have to sign up for some dumbass program.  I don't like typing my real name into things on the internet, and I sure as hell don't like typing both my name and my real address on the internet.  Then, these cockbags did that think where you have to have a symbol or a capitol letter in your password.  This is a problem because my requirement for passwords is that I don't have to touch the shift key.  Also, the dumbass companies that force you to use symbols and number are also the dumbasses that typically put arbitrary limits on your password length that are so low you still can't make a strong password.

Then it got worse.  You know those questions your bank uses to verify your identity--the ones asking about your family and previous residences, most likely mined from your credit report?  That shit is pretty creepy, but there's not a lot I can do about my credit report and banks using it without becoming super weird paranoid person.  However, I think its reasonable to think UPS shouldn't be pulling that data.  The more people who can access that information, the less secret it becomes.  I am concerned that eventually there will be no more secrets left.

Let me break down which people, I think, can reasonably expected to get my real information:

• girls
• friends and family
• attractive, STD-free, female stalkers who ride motorcycles

And now for the people who shouldn't ever know who I am / where I actually reside:

• fucking NSA
• cell phone providers
•  power/sewer/water/gas utilities
• internet providers
• the NSA
• bowling alleys
• creepy stalkers, law enforcement 
• UPS and Fedex
• the dickwads at the NSA
• people on reddit
• the department of motor vehicles
• everyone on the internet
• the Federal aviation administration
• the cuntbags at the NSA
• doctors, lawyers, massage therapists, dentists, mechanics
• people I play kickball with
• my employer
• credit card companies, banks, credit unions
• and...the NSA

The sad fact is, without dedicating all that much effort into it (and without doing anything that makes people around me think I'm too weird), I'm pretty sure the organizations I interact with are getting more skilled about trading information about me to each other faster than I am at learning how to keep them in the dark.   Even my mail service where I have the P.O. box wanted two forms of ID to prove who I was.  That hardly seems fair (on the bright side, they only do this when you open an account; you can add other names without verification, but they show up in the same inbox--so maybe you could pay someone to open an account for you).  And, honestly, when you think about the sites you go to without bothering with TOR because its too slow, and the people you emails, etc, there is just no way to do it right now without being weird about it.

The best trick, as far as I know, is to set up whatever accounts you need to, and them move.  Especially with drivers licenses--those fuckers are all over knowing whether the address you gave them is actually some kind of P.O. box.  I even had a guy in Washington's DMV look up the address I gave him with google maps.  I was not happy about that.  The joke is on them, though:  guess who is going to establish a temporary residence in an apartment that rents weekly every time he needs to renew his license?  This guy.  And I'm not even doing it for the privacy/paranoia anymore.  I'm just doing it because I'm pissed they wouldn't let me use my P.O. box.

So, obviously, the next step is to start ordering packages to fictitious names, because fuck UPS.

This will obviously prevent me from picking them up, but hopefully I can start guessing which packages will require a signature, and send those to an amazon locker.

[Edit]
The biggest problem I have with using alias' for anything is thinking up a good one.  However, the best alias has been sitting right in front of me:  Edward Snowden.  We should all use it.