We are not the first residents of our rural property, but no previous owner had our road name and number. It came from the county 911 office.
So when an envelope arrived from the Social Security Administration for someone else - I'll call him John Doe - with precisely our address, I went scurrying for answers.
Was Doe trying to use our address for identity theft? Or had there been a computer misalignment of names and addresses that could affect large numbers? Or was it something far simpler?
It appears I'll never know, but I have made some discoveries.
There are recommended procedures when a Social Security envelope arrives addressed to someone other than a resident. First and foremost, return the mail to the sender, said Robert Jeffries, public affairs specialist for the agency's Philadelphia region.
"Ordinarily we want to have the piece back so we can try to put a trace on it," he said.
"Unfortunately, sometimes we do not find out what happened."
It could be anything from errors at a contract mailer used by the agency to mechanical problems that align names and addresses.
But the agency has no way to know if there is a major mailing error unless the letters are returned or there are a large volume of calls from recipients of misdirected letters.
"I would recommend they call in," Jeffries said. "If it is happening hundreds of time, we need to know about it and address it.
"Our instruction to every Social Security employee should be to get the piece of mail back."
Not everyone answering phones at the agency's toll-free call centers has that message, I discovered. My skepticism led me to contact Jeffries, whose Charleston number was listed on the Social Security Web site.
On my first toll-free try, which landed me at the Colorado call center, a man named James suggested that the misguided letter was the result of nothing more than a typo.
"I don't know what you can do with it," he said, but then suggested returning to sender. A short while later he called me back to specifically ask that it be sent to his identification number at the Denver center.
We are not the first residents of our rural property, but no previous owner had our road name and number. It came from the county 911 office.
So when an envelope arrived from the Social Security Administration for someone else - I'll call him John Doe - with precisely our address, I went scurrying for answers.
Was Doe trying to use our address for identity theft? Or had there been a computer misalignment of names and addresses that could affect large numbers? Or was it something far simpler?
It appears I'll never know, but I have made some discoveries.
There are recommended procedures when a Social Security envelope arrives addressed to someone other than a resident. First and foremost, return the mail to the sender, said Robert Jeffries, public affairs specialist for the agency's Philadelphia region.
"Ordinarily we want to have the piece back so we can try to put a trace on it," he said.
"Unfortunately, sometimes we do not find out what happened."
It could be anything from errors at a contract mailer used by the agency to mechanical problems that align names and addresses.
But the agency has no way to know if there is a major mailing error unless the letters are returned or there are a large volume of calls from recipients of misdirected letters.
"I would recommend they call in," Jeffries said. "If it is happening hundreds of time, we need to know about it and address it.
"Our instruction to every Social Security employee should be to get the piece of mail back."
Not everyone answering phones at the agency's toll-free call centers has that message, I discovered. My skepticism led me to contact Jeffries, whose Charleston number was listed on the Social Security Web site.
On my first toll-free try, which landed me at the Colorado call center, a man named James suggested that the misguided letter was the result of nothing more than a typo.
"I don't know what you can do with it," he said, but then suggested returning to sender. A short while later he called me back to specifically ask that it be sent to his identification number at the Denver center.
Not satisfied, I made another toll-free call. It landed in Houston.
A woman named Ann asked what was in the envelope. When I demurred, having never opened it, she quickly rebounded, reminding me that it's illegal to open mail to someone else.
Eventually I talked with her supervisor.
"We do receive calls on situations like this," she said. "We tell them to return it or destroy it."
Jeffries said that was not an acceptable answer. "Destroying it is not right."
The agency needs to trace the problem and get the information to the rightful recipient.
Perhaps John Doe has his letter by now, but the means by which his name was affixed to our address remains a mystery for me.
Had I first read fraud reporting information on www.socialsecurity.gov, I would have known it was futile to hope to discover the cause.
The guidelines outline how to report fraud, including identity theft, waste and abuse, but state: "Under no circumstances will we provide you with the 'status" of action taken on the allegation."
Because the agency won't be calling, there is no reason to give a Social Security number to a caller, Jeffries said.
It's one of the basic rules for avoiding identity theft.
"Don't release information unless you initiate the contact," he said.
Contact Evadna Bartlett at eva...@dailymail.com.
