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Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: Burning Babylon on May 19, 2013, 11:53 am

Title: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: Burning Babylon on May 19, 2013, 11:53 am
For those not familiar with the concept of Mail Forwarding: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_forwarding - Basically a person registers a virtual address at some location which has the ability to receive and forward mail at that specific virtual address to (almost) any other location in the world. This could for example open up for vendors having products stored in other countries to significantly reduce shipping times in those specific countries or simply being able to send out an order online without having to package anything whenever an order from that country comes in. For customers the use could be to buy products from North American Silk Road vendors who do not ship anything beyond domestic orders. Now there are reasons why it's unfortunately not as simple as it sounds and in this post I'll go into these points.

Now this project got a bit out of hand of sorts as I did not expect there to be so many different providers when I searched around, so I'm going to structure this thread into three different posts. The first post (this one) will be about the concept itself, questions, problems and solutions. Some of the questions will be open ended as I don't have any answer to them currently but hopefully people will be able to fill in on some of them. The second post will be for specific Mail Forwarders and the third post will be about Virtual Office Providers which are slightly different from Mail Forwarders as they're kind of more advanced and expensive. A warning this is going to be a small wall of text so if whoever is reading is not interested you should stop here and jump to my second or third post if you want direct links to the different vendors I've found.  8)

I'll be posting a specific angle from a vendor perspective and post my thoughts on benefits and drawbacks for each one:

* Shipping

+ A product can technically be stored almost anywhere in the world for fast shipping to whatever country it's currently in. On top of that being able to keep a stock anywhere would lead to the ability of preparing multiple packages in advance and instead of creating a new package for each new order just let someone in another part of the world put a label on a package and send it away.
- The price is an obvious issue for each sent package, along with the providers having different maximum days stored until they start charging packages extra per day. If a mail location gets raided by Law Enforcement they would shut down both the user and seize any packages. While I know someone will argue there might be a possible log of each address used (which is true) Law Enforcement would have no proof of any already delivered packages and it would be a stretch for them to go after individual users. Another drawback is the Stealth Level of the package would have to be exceptionally good as the operators can and will open packages regularly, the minimum standard would have to be basically the product in a Moisture Barrier Bag, encased in some kind of legit stealth product, which in turn is put in plastic which makes it look completely new.

Questions: What vendors has the best prices for shipping? How many vendors have the capacity to send mail within the same country as they're operating in? Are there any vendors who can forward mail so there's no need for the receiver to sign for it? How much does shipping prices vary from country to country? What kind of standards would have to be achieved packaging-wise to be able to consistently stay under the radar from customs? What kind of customs declaration object(s) would be the most effective in terms of staying believable?

* Accountability

+ Any package intercepted in transit to another Mail Forwarder will get seized and blamed on the person sending it, ie. the vendor which would have used a fake ID thus leading to a dead end for Law Enforcement. When the package has arrived in the same country as the customer and is resent at a later date the risk is basically non-existent if it has made it that far.
- Most of the forwarders will have a requirement of signing for the package, anyone could sign for it but someone must eventually do it. Again thinking like a very paranoid person someone might argue Law Enforcement will intentionally let the package get through customs, trace it to the mail forwarder and at the day of delivery replace the driver with police so they can make an arrest right there and then.

Questions: How much do the vendors look up personal information when sending in for example passport and a bill, ie. would they not be able to tell the difference between a fake ID since they have no system to verify people directly? Has anyone used a fake ID successfully to register on any Mail Forwarding Site? How much does it differ country from country in terms of how much personal information you have to provide to be able to register an account? What happens to an account when Law Enforcement shuts down an user, ie. is it instantly disabled or is it become a big operation which takes significant time to unfold like in this case: http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/blog/morning-edition/2013/01/federal-agents-raid-myuscom-warehouse.html ?

* Services

+ A lot of the vendors who are based in the US have digital customs interfaces, in other words the ability to type the exact contents and the value of the package and then let the vendor take care of the rest - this would have to be done manually normally. For larger packages and if one declares the object as something beyond a gift some vendors have the option to pre-pay import taxes in advance, which significantly reduces the time the package spends in customs and minimizes any potential risk for the potential customer.
- There is always the risk an employee can open a package and see if there's something entirely different packaged than marked due to sloppy packaging. It could get stuck in the system for example because they require more money than originally anticipated due to size. The ability to track and keep a history of each package as it comes in is a risk if Law Enforcement would at some point be able to link the service directly to you.

Questions: None at the moment

* Miscellaneous

+/- The concept for Mail Forwarding itself is solid, if/when drugs get legalized at some point any vendor which has mobile stocks all over the world ready to ship at short notice will beat any vendor shipping from any single fixed position. The infrastructure is technically there for being able to send one large package with many pre-packaged mails inside them (without stamps) ready to be unpackaged by a Mail Forwarder and then sent one by one to wherever it's ordered online. The only reason in the end not to use this would be if the customers didn't think it would warrant the higher price for faster shipping times and the (possible) reduction in security. For the vendor who ships the biggest issue would be not getting caught and being able to register with a fake ID cheaply and easily without getting shut down. It would be sad not to see this breakthrough in the coming years solely because of the governments around the world.

Questions: Would it be viable to send packages from high risk countries like Colombia to multiple transit countries before finally sending them over to the US/Europe, ie. would that make it go another (safer) route than the normal direct route which has some of the most thorough customs on the planet? Will we ever achieve teleportation which would the Mail Forwarding System obsolete? :)
Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: Burning Babylon on May 19, 2013, 11:56 am
This post will focus entirely on all Mail Forwarders I've been able to find and the next post will be about all Virtual Office Providers. Some providers will be listed multiple times as they operate in multiple countries at once. For any Intelligence on specific providers see the thread [Intel] Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts: http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=183216.0

Active Regions: Mail Forwarding ( http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=171551.msg1387393#msg1387393 )

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Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: Burning Babylon on May 19, 2013, 11:58 am
A Virtual Office almost always performs the same job as a Mail Forwarder but they are more expensive in general and usually have side services like for example receptionists taking calls. Some providers will be listed multiple times as they operate in multiple countries at once. For any Intelligence on specific providers see the thread [Intel] Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts: http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=183216

Active Regions: Mail Forwarding ( http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=171551.msg1387393#msg1387393 )

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Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: ld533 on May 19, 2013, 12:17 pm
Thanks for the info, and interesting read!
Bump!
Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: Andrimion on May 19, 2013, 04:07 pm
Very, very good idea to start such a topic.
All my orders from India to the EU get seized so I will have to use a UK mail forwarder.
Shipments from India to the UK are more or less safe because it is an former colony.

But now I want to know what UK forwarder to use? Indians sent EMS trackable post which has to be signed for, so the UK forwarder must sign and put the Indian A4 envelope in an EU style business envelope without opening the goodies. And than forward to the EU.

I haven't tried any of them because I think they don't forward when they see Indian meds in the EMS package.
So the big question is now which one to use who will forward in good stealth without questions?

I can try all of them but that is too expensive, so I would like to know who successfully forwarded from India to the UK and then to the EU? Or has anyone a good suggestion about what UK forwarder to use?

Best regards,
Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: pine on May 20, 2013, 08:45 am
Great job! But you should obtain more currency for your efforts. Link to it in the Security subforum with another thread and edit the title of both of the threads with the "[intel]" tag such as "[intel]  Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts". That way people will continue to find it months later when they're searching.
Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: Countdown2013 on May 20, 2013, 09:06 am
Very interesting... so much potential , india>uk>nz would be a great way to receive discount meds!!

I owe Burning Babylon a +karma from the other day for being so helpful , so close to the 100 posts then its coming your way mate!
Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: bluegreen23 on June 09, 2013, 04:01 pm
questions:

1) have you read the postal act (or equivalent for whatever country) ?

I was speaking with a friend recently. regarding a reseller service through mail forwarding and such. Anyways I've yet to research the laws but basically since mail forwarding is legal, I was curious as to what requirements were made in terms of ID, or due diligence to knowing and identifying customers.

I was speculating on having a client base that was anonymous.
Bare with me and please help me if I'm missing something.

Basic Mailbox receiver with an address and a guy sitting behind a counter. mail man walks in and hands over a shit ton of mail. because all mail is addressed to this 1 store. for instance 1 package might be addressed to:   
John doe
123 fake st.
etcetc
etcetc.

while another is addressed to
melvin chu
123 fake st.
etcetc
etcetc.

It's a business so multiple names shouldn't be an issue. and it is set up as a remailer so the post office knows whats up.

each name is associated with a number. john is 1 and melvin is 2.
Far far away in some other country free of everything is a computer unattached to the web. it is simple a data storage unit. in this wonderful hidden away unit is the name and address according to each number.  So all the mails in and all the packages are put into new boxes. the info is transferred from a friendly foreigner and you print out some labels and send them off.
This sort of insures there's no actual data anywhere on site.

anything standing out as horribly illegal ? I mean suspicious and obviously doing shady as shit is fine. if it's not illegal then that's what lawyers are for.

just curious about the thoughts on this.
Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: simplemechanic on June 09, 2013, 04:20 pm
Bit question: does the mail forwarding service need a search warrant to search your packages. This is the advantage of using government mail services, they can't inspect any package for any reason. Private carriers can (I think). If these mail forwarders can search packages without a warrant, then I can't imagine this idea taking off too far. However, if they do need a warrant, props on finding this and organizing it so well.
Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: Burning Babylon on June 09, 2013, 05:41 pm
Quote
1) have you read the postal act (or equivalent for whatever country) ?

If you're referring to specific rules about this sort of behavior I've only been able to find some information for the United States about it. It's called US Postal Service Form 1583 and one is required to fill one out if the package is sent through USPS (its not needed however through UPS/Fedex) - it can be found here: https://about.usps.com/forms/ps1583.pdf

I'm fairly sure this form is not needed for any other country and since there's virtual offices in most countries they should go under the law of that specific country. The regulations depends mostly on the carrier as far as I can tell.

Quote
I was speaking with a friend recently. regarding a reseller service through mail forwarding and such. Anyways I've yet to research the laws but basically since mail forwarding is legal, I was curious as to what requirements were made in terms of ID, or due diligence to knowing and identifying customers.

I was speculating on having a client base that was anonymous.
Bare with me and please help me if I'm missing something.

Basic Mailbox receiver with an address and a guy sitting behind a counter. mail man walks in and hands over a shit ton of mail. because all mail is addressed to this 1 store. for instance 1 package might be addressed to:   
John doe
123 fake st.
etcetc
etcetc.

while another is addressed to
melvin chu
123 fake st.
etcetc
etcetc.

It's a business so multiple names shouldn't be an issue. and it is set up as a remailer so the post office knows whats up.

each name is associated with a number. john is 1 and melvin is 2.
Far far away in some other country free of everything is a computer unattached to the web. it is simple a data storage unit. in this wonderful hidden away unit is the name and address according to each number.  So all the mails in and all the packages are put into new boxes. the info is transferred from a friendly foreigner and you print out some labels and send them off.
This sort of insures there's no actual data anywhere on site.

anything standing out as horribly illegal ? I mean suspicious and obviously doing shady as shit is fine. if it's not illegal then that's what lawyers are for.

just curious about the thoughts on this.

I've been in the same line of thought.  :)

Someone packages 10-100+ envelopes/parcels with stamps on them filled with a designated weight of product each and stuffs them into one large package which gets sent to the Mail Forwarder. Once there the Mail Forwarder unpacks the box and is simply awaiting for what addresses so he can print a label and put it on the envelope/parcel and send it on it's way. They basically do it like this now but in smaller scale as when they open the package they photograph the contents and put it up on their profile and awaits orders to send multiple items in the same package, so in a way this would be doing the reverse in that regard; taking a big box and sending them out individually. There's nothing inherently illegal with the method myself I'm aware off as it could clearly be used for legal purposes aswell, for example a company which hires a Mail Forwarder as a sub contractor to send packages internationally as they don't have the time to fill out customs forms in person. Now when I think about it I'm fairly sure anyone selling large quantities of things on for example eBay internationally could save a lot of time by having someone else do this job instead of them.

Quote
Bit question: does the mail forwarding service need a search warrant to search your packages. This is the advantage of using government mail services, they can't inspect any package for any reason. Private carriers can (I think). If these mail forwarders can search packages without a warrant, then I can't imagine this idea taking off too far. However, if they do need a warrant, props on finding this and organizing it so well.

They most likely get a search warrant for the entire complex as opposed to a singular mail, these two articles on a raid don't give that much information on the nature of the search warrant unfortunately: http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/blog/morning-edition/2013/01/federal-agents-raid-myuscom-warehouse.html / http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20130124/ARTICLE/130129734 - However the question here is if all packages are properly sealed in Moisture Barrier Bags what exactly are police supposed to do, rip open every single package in the hopes of finding something? I would presume they were just raiding specific customers who they knew for a fact were shipping (most likely) large quantities of drugs. This is the only known raid on a Mail Forwarder as far as I'm aware, if the company itself find the drugs (which they do occasionally, some people use no preventive layers at all and it will stink big time) they simply hand it over to police or something to that effect. Worth keeping in mind as I've previously said though they will inspect the packages, so it needs some kind of stealth beyond just the protective layers themselves.
Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: bluegreen23 on June 13, 2013, 05:18 pm
so then...
let's say a legit remailer was used to forward mail to someone? they aren't at fault for whats in the packages are they?

Just like ups/fedex isn't at fault, or the pilot on an airplane isn't at fault.

Just trying to figuring out how this could be useful. I think that it could be
1) shield vendors and provide a real return address on the final leg of the journey, and for the first leg to the remailer it provides a widely recognized fully legit address that is most likely familiar to the PO. along side this it ensures that the package would go from a remailer with all it's mail going out, to everywhere maybe masking it a little more.
2) protects buyers. Their address is never given to the vendor, and if 500 pieces of mail go through a remailer then it seems unlikely your one package will be focused upon. I actually think it helps buyers more than vendors as their can be even more privacy offered by a remailer.
3) the more the remailer is used for everything (amazon, ebay, sr, business mail, expats etcetc) the more the PO begins to recognize regular package mail.
4) vendor could use it as a forwarder instead of a remailer from the buyer (if the buyer gives the remailer address it protects the buyer) if the vendor was to use the remailer as a forwarding hub (having an account to post mail with the return address of the remailer) it would allow for either recovery (risky) or 100% proof of mail arrival (or return to sender due to bad address).

I'm just seeing this as a big positive. never mind the implications if you were to take your remailers data base off shore. insure full privacy even in the event of police action. the computers have no customer info on them. I mean 10 dollars a month plus postage is a good deal for a vendor. little cost for added security, greater camouflage, and possible recovery.
As a buyer the same 10 bucks a month could offer a guarantee that no vendor ever actually has your address, and that mail coming to you is from a legit and known source. It's not that your package won't be looked at but it seems that an employee at the PO might not care as much if there are a rather large number of packages from the same address daily.

Down side to this?
Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: bluegreen23 on June 14, 2013, 08:14 am
Was also curious if anyone knew where to find the laws regarding privately owned and operated PO box services? Like you can go into UPS or some mailboxes are us store and get mailbox. they usually require id and what not. but why? Is there a law stating that you must have ID, or register? I'm searching the webs for info but can't seem to find anything specific.

Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: sickroadleaks. on June 14, 2013, 04:19 pm
 8)
Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: Love on June 14, 2013, 04:42 pm
Last time I checked virtual offices etc don't reship your mail for you? They will for individual letters but you can't mail a box of envelopes predone etc to send out to 20 different people, maybe you can in USA but they won't do that here in the UK as they'll want one receiving address for who you're claiming to be.

Quote
if/when drugs get legalized at some point any vendor which has mobile stocks all over the world ready to ship at short notice will beat any vendor shipping from any single fixed position.

Hah, no we will all go out of business as bayer & glaxosmithkline crush all opposition by having such large businesses they can reduce the cost of production and transports to pennies on the kilo and can produce hundreds of tons of what ever the fuck they want at 99% purity
Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: bluegreen23 on June 14, 2013, 05:05 pm
so then...
let's say a legit remailer was used to forward mail to someone? they aren't at fault for whats in the packages are they?

Just like ups/fedex isn't at fault, or the pilot on an airplane isn't at fault.

Just trying to figuring out how this could be useful. I think that it could be
1) shield vendors and provide a real return address on the final leg of the journey, and for the first leg to the remailer it provides a widely recognized fully legit address that is most likely familiar to the PO. along side this it ensures that the package would go from a remailer with all it's mail going out, to everywhere maybe masking it a little more.
2) protects buyers. Their address is never given to the vendor, and if 500 pieces of mail go through a remailer then it seems unlikely your one package will be focused upon. I actually think it helps buyers more than vendors as their can be even more privacy offered by a remailer.
3) the more the remailer is used for everything (amazon, ebay, sr, business mail, expats etcetc) the more the PO begins to recognize regular package mail.
4) vendor could use it as a forwarder instead of a remailer from the buyer (if the buyer gives the remailer address it protects the buyer) if the vendor was to use the remailer as a forwarding hub (having an account to post mail with the return address of the remailer) it would allow for either recovery (risky) or 100% proof of mail arrival (or return to sender due to bad address).

I'm just seeing this as a big positive. never mind the implications if you were to take your remailers data base off shore. insure full privacy even in the event of police action. the computers have no customer info on them. I mean 10 dollars a month plus postage is a good deal for a vendor. little cost for added security, greater camouflage, and possible recovery.
As a buyer the same 10 bucks a month could offer a guarantee that no vendor ever actually has your address, and that mail coming to you is from a legit and known source. It's not that your package won't be looked at but it seems that an employee at the PO might not care as much if there are a rather large number of packages from the same address daily.

Down side to this?

1) read the above and tell me if i'm retarded or a genius.
2) remove the postal money orders as they seem to require a sender to give info (who knows if you can make it up but you have to give it so screw that) as a receiver it wouldn't matter, obviously the stores name would have to be on it.
Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: zxydwx3 on July 07, 2013, 11:23 pm
This is a tremendous contribution. I've used an American service to forward legitimate parcels to me in Canada, from sources that only ship within the USA. Paying a small fee to get something basically direct from the sender, instead of looking on eBay or amazon etc, is well worth it for me.

I think you've done a great job of indentifying some of the issues associated with using such a service for the transportation of contraband, and you're to be commended for you efforts!
Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: Jack N Hoff on July 07, 2013, 11:26 pm
It pretty much removes all of your plausible deniability if you're using a mail forwarding service or virtual office.
Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: Burning Babylon on July 08, 2013, 12:06 am
Quote
It pretty much removes all of your plausible deniability if you're using a mail forwarding service or virtual office.

This is partly true if one has filled out a US Postal Service Form 1583 or something equivalent for any other country, but some Mail Forwarders will not require this if one instead ships through UPS/DHL/FedEx. While it's true this won't help a private customer with plausible deniability they will most likely only use this service to gain access to products they wouldn't otherwise have access to otherwise, like domestic only products in other countries. It's possible this could be used for the benefit of a private customer as well if he had access to a fake ID but no one has written enough information about how this works to know yet.

For vendors on the other hand I see this as the next step for difficult countries like Sweden and Australia. With a fake ID or even multiple ones one will have the hypothetical capability of creating virtual stocks of product all over the world if the packaging is up for it in terms of quality and the ability of being stored longer periods of time. The risk is outsourced to the virtual identity and instead of a hefty jail time if caught as would be the case normally the virtual identity just gets disabled for that specific Mail Forwarder as the police will have no ability to progress further if done correctly. I'm going to do an announcement in our vendor thread a bit later today that we're going to create a new separate vendor identity which will deal exclusively with Virtual Mail Management around the world, and the identity Burning Babylon will stay Domestic Only with the exception of international shipments to our various Mail Forwarding Addresses. More details on that later.  :)

For this concept to be usable by people here on Silk Road there needs to be significant Intelligence Work which is shared openly here on the forums. I'm not sure how to get others involved to be honest but it would help a lot if anyone reading this could just register on any random Mail Forwarder for a month and try and send some random spam to it and then write a post here exactly how it operates, for ideas on free spam see my thread Postal Spam - Where and How? http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=178446.0
Title: Re: Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts
Post by: Burning Babylon on July 29, 2013, 04:06 am
Done some major updating to the layout and added a lot of new Virtual Office Providers in particular. Due to the amount of new providers I hit the 20000 character cap and had to delete the Inactive Region Section to get it to fit - I'm pasting it below so I have it somewhere:

Inactive Regions: Virtual Office Providers ( http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=171551.msg1387393#msg1387393 )

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Now it's time to get serious with the thread [Intel] Mail Forwarding and Virtual Office Providers - Concept and Thoughts: http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=183216  :)