Silk Road forums
Discussion => Shipping => Topic started by: wellgme on July 16, 2012, 11:33 pm
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Any thoughts on how to anonymously track an EMS Shipment coming from out of the country to the US? I know how to track it on their site but I know people say don't track USPS shipments through USPS on tor. Track instead through tor through a service like packagemapping.com . I'm wondering if anyone has experience on tracking EMS shipments in some anonymous way before they hit the US and show up in USPS system. Thanks.
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In all honestly, unless you can hack into USPS's servers without blinking, no.
If they get a request for an ID, they get a request for an ID and that is all there is to it. Any package getting looked at is probably going to secondary even if you do it through a 3rd party service.
The truth is that you don't really need to know. You're just trying to sooth your anxiety levels down to acceptable levels, which is why tracking IDs exist for most people in practice. There is no shipment with a value that requires you know it's exact location from the postal system. It's not like you can swan in and pick it up at any point between source and destination. So the best advice is to relax.
Otherwise, if you're not happy, there are two things you can do:
1. Obtain a private courier (remember what I said about the value of a shipment?).
2. Setup a mobile phone in your shipment to periodically send an email to a usenet group or some other public Internet service. Problem: Mobile phones turning themselves on/off in a postal package could justly be treated to a visit from a bomb disposal technician. But there are smarter ways of approaching the problem (we've discussed this before on here with regard to vendors discovering package interception using light sensitive RFID tags).
However, this probably over the top for most people and most shipments in practice.
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Oh yeah, and if LEO intercepts midroute, it's highly unlikely (unless you've super shit hot priority measured in hours and minutes so you can detect otherwise trivial delays) that you'll ever know. It is totally normal for regular packages to go on loop the loop, visit all kinds of stupid places before they arrive on your doorstep. It is also normal for packages to be tracked down to Cali while they're in N.Y on your very doorstep. And LEO, you know, can just fucking lie to you, so there is that too.
tldr; tracking shipping is seriously overrated and I wouldn't consider it for any packages as a vendor or buyer. For one thing, vendor/buyer will usually have to sign documents for tracked shipments. A practice which on SR is called unintelligent. Signing implies ownership. It doesn't matter what the actual law says, and it probably does imply that too, but because your average Joe jury or judge thinks it is. It's a nice discrete state, a great way to pin a guy.
Normal regular post is just fine. If you're a consumer, chill and plan your purchases in advance. Demanding your chronic in a specified number of days or hours shoves your package further up the food chain, not just in terms of price/delivery time, but also the degree to which your package becomes interesting to Customs and postal inspectors. Remember, we're bottom feeders here! :D
Stay in the deep end with the largest possible set.