Worried About Stolen Mail? USPS May Soon Send You Images of What Is In Your Mailbox

We've all seen those nasty headlines, especially around the holiday season, that mail and package thefts are on the rise and while home security camera might catch that package thief in action it can be hard to see what they are stealing out of your mailbox. The United Postal Service (USPS) might soon have a solution!

The USPS is testing a new feature called Informed Delivery that will take and send up to 10 images a day of what's in your physical mailbox to your email inbox. The USPS will send black and white images of your actual letter-sized mail pieces, processed by USPS sorting equipment, each morning. You can then view the images which include things like sender information from any computer or a smart phone from just about anywhere in the world. For those with heavier mail loads, 10 pieces and above, you be able to view additional images on your online dashboard - in the same place you track your packages!

For now the service is only available to residential customers in Northern Virginia, NYC and Connecticut with further expansion "being considered" for 2016. In fact, the USPS says it has been testing the service in Virginia since 2014.

Once expansion begins the service will be free for all users with a My USPS account (also free) and it will be available to all residential customers in those geographic areas, sorry no business accounts. To see more information on Informed Delivery, geographic availability, and further enrollment questions, go to http://www.informeddelivery.com/learnmore .