I received a letter with a Pitney Bowes postal metered date.  The
letter took over a week to arrive (normal is two).  I believe that the
date on the postage meter was changed for my letter.  Is it possible
to tell whether or not the date has been changed on a postal meter for
one letter and then set back to the actual date by the numbers on the
received postal meter stamp?

---

Clarification of Question by capa-ga on 27 Sep 2004 10:57 PDT

(normal is two days)

Dear capa,

I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that it is impossible
to detect postal-meter fraud based on the numbers appearing in a
printed stamp. The good news is that it is very difficult to backdate
a postage meter, and essentially impossible to do so without detection
by the postal authorities.

First, consider the structure of the stamp printed by a Pitney Bowes
postal meter. Such a stamp is known generically as a postal indicium,
or postal indicia in the plural. A 1996 research paper that proposes
cryptographic methods to strengthen the security of postal indicia
includes an illustration of a postal indicium and points out its
features.

Bennet, Yee, Heintze: Cryptographic Postage Indicia
http://www.bennetyee.org/ucsd-pages/pub/asian-96.ps

You will need a PostScript viewer such as GhostView to read this
document. On page 4, Figure 1 shows a standard Pitney Bowes postage
stamp. The paper describes it thus.

"On the left side of the [indicium] are the words 'Presorted First
Class' printed vertically, identifying the class of the mail.
Immediately to the right is the city-state circle, which notes the
city (Pittsburgh), state (Pennsylvania) and the date (26th February,
1993) of the [indicium]. Further to the right, and directly underneath
the eagle, is a meter identification mark (PB METER 6829680). This
indicates that the imprint was made by a Pitney-Bowes meter, serial
number 6829680. Finally, in the box on the right-hand end of the
[indicium] is the postage value (29 cents)."

So the numbers at the bottom of the stamp make up an identifying code
for the postage meter that stays the same regardless of the date,
amount, or location of the imprint. The very purpose of this research
paper, which was funded by the United States Postal Service, is to
explore methods of including additional information in a printed stamp
that would enable the receiver to determine its authenticity. Such
methods have not yet been implemented in Pitney Bowes postal meters.
They will likely be common in the future, but by then, postage stamps
will be printed from computers by specialized software.

At present, Pitney Bowes postal meters are physically secured by a
tamper-evident casing. A determined criminal would be able to force
one open, but the casing is so designed that the unlawful access would
be visible to the postal authorities, to whom the meter must be
returned periodically to add more credit. The date of a stamp can be
set forward without tampering and this would not be discernible to the
receiver for the reasons given above, but it is not clear how this
would be advantageous to the sender. To backdate a postal meter
requires forcible and criminal entry.

"You can set PB postage meters _ahead_ to any date, but you can't
backdate them. ... Pitney Bowes postage meters can, in theory, be
backdated, but you would need either a) a series of codes available
only to certain PB technicians and administrators, or b) to break
open the dater, run it backwards manually, reassemble it, and hope
that it still functions. To do so, as you can guess, would violate
several civil and criminal statutes, not the least of which would
be Mail Fraud."

Colin Fahey: Scholastic Aptitude Test
http://www.colinfahey.com/2003apr5_sat/2003apr5_sat.htm

Unless you suspect a Pitney Bowes technician of carrying out an inside
job, it is highly unlikely that a postal meter has been compromised
specifically to perpetrate a hoax on you.

If you feel that my answer is incomplete or inaccurate in any way, please
post a clarification request so that I have a chance to meet your needs
before you assign a rating.

Regards,

leapinglizard


Search Queries:

postal meter tamper evident
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=postal+meter+tamper+evident&btnG=Search

usps postal indicia
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=usps+postal+indicia&btnG=Search

I appreciate the clarity of your response even if I don't like the
answer.  I wanted to know if I had proof that fraud had been
committed.  My home was hit by a tornado resulting from hurricane
Ivan.  It is hard to believe that my policy was terminated the day the
tornado hit.  Thank you.

Isn't it possible for an envelope to be back-dated in advance, then
later sealed and mailed. For example, someone who does this often can
postmark and retain envelopes on a daily basis, then go back as far as
necessary for a given mailing.

-Seth

Yes, sethhoyt, good point. It's possible to make backdated envelopes
without any special technology, given sufficient foresight. Fraud of
this kind is impossible to detect.

leapinglizard

Leapinglizard's response is accurate for new postage meters, but I
know that it is possible to stamp an earlier date on an envelope
without breaking into or damaging the meter.  The meters I used at
previous jobs (through 1994) had to have the date advanced manually
each morning before running any mail through them.  That is, the meter
itself didn't "know" the current date.  It was not at all uncommon for
somebody to forget to advance the date and run some mail through on
the previous day's date.  We then had to run the envelopes through
with zero postage and the correct date on the back of the envelope to
show the PO what date we were really mailing them.  Your correspondent
would have to have failed to advance his/her meter for several days to
accomplish what you suspect was done, but it is certainly possible. 
So, in summary, you can't easily set a postage meter's date back, but
you can simply not advance it.  New meters might "know" the correct
date, but I bet there are still lots of old ones out there.  Also, I
think the PO is supposed to check metered mail they receive to be sent
out, to be sure the date is correct, but if your envelope was in the
middle of a big stack it could easily go undetected.

Interesting info, aj999. This method of failing to advance the postal
meter achieves the same fraudulent results as stamping an envelope on
the same day and then advancing it as usual. It is somewhat less
convenient, however, since it requires that the machine remain unused
for all other envelopes on subsequent days prior to correction, or
else that one print inaccurate dates on all other envelopes.

leapinglizard

Back in the late 1970s I heard an anecdote that someone was a few days
late sending in their income tax return so they went to their office
and back-dated some kind of machine.  No idea if it was a Pitney Bowes
(are they or were they then the Wintel of the postal meter world).
Would a  pre-1979 vintage machine of any major manufacturer permit
such evasions?

To add to aj999-ga's comment; with "old style" (totally mechanical) meters
you could set the date to anything you wanted at any time you wanted.  Roll
it forwards or  backwards, it didn't matter, as it was (as aj999-ga says) set
manually.  I don't know if there any of these old meters still out there, but
if there are, then they could have changed the date and no one would be the
wiser.

Looking Forward, denco-ga - Google Answers Researcher

Very interesting. However, I have never in my lifetime seen a stamp
printed by a purely mechanical postal meter. Since all postal meters
are managed by the United States Postal Service, in whose financial
interest it is to maintain proper accounts, I don't see why such
insecure models would remain long in service after becoming obsolete.

leapinglizard

Just to clarify.  The meters, at least the important part, which was the funds
on the meter, were secure.  This was done by a wired lead tag that was secured
on the meter with a "signed" press when you took it in to get it "refilled"
with postage.  No one really cared about the date all that much because you
needed it to be pretty much current for it to work.

That said, it was not unusual for a letter to be stamped with Friday's date
(for example) and not be mailed until Monday.  As long as there was "money" on
the meter, and there had to be for the letter to get stamped, the USPS didn't
mind.  It wasn't all that unusual to "forward" date press releases, etc.

As for taxes, the IRS requires a "real" postmark on your returns, and a meter
mark doesn't fill that requirement.  Maybe "in the day" that wasn't the case.

Again, do these meters still exist out there?  I don't know, but as meters were
a very expensive item at one time, and as I imagine there aren't cheap now, it
wouldn't shock me all that much to learn there were some still around.  They
were built like battleships at the time.

Looking Forward, denco-ga - Google Answers Researcher

I'm with the rest.
I used to have to backdate stuff all the time for the boss...

Interesting, dreamboat. Tell us more. Did you do so recently? In a
prior decade? Perhaps you could summarize the steps involved.

leapinglizard

Thank you for the rating, capa. You have a very sad story to tell. I
feel for you. One day, perhaps, a great stroke of chance will fall in
your favor.

leapinglizard

If it is fraud, the same thing may have happened to other people. I
would look for those other people if I were you.

We obviously don't know all of the particulars of your situation,
however, it is not unusual for mail to take extra time to arrive after
a natural disaster. If this theory of fraud is based on mail taking a
long time to arrive after a recent hurricane / tornado, then this
would be a normal thing.