Mailbox fishing is the process in which thieves gain entry into the interior of mailboxes and steal mail. The purpose of stealing the mail is to obtain checks, credit/debit/gift cards and other personally identifiable information that would allow the thief and others to gain access to your finances.

You can minimize your chances of falling victim to mail fishing by following the prevention methods:

• Deposit mail in mailboxes as close to the scheduled pick-up time as possible or take it directly to the post office.
• Use pigmented (permanent) ink pens to write out checks. Pigmented ink prevents the altering of checks.
• Keep a record of financial transactions regardless of how they are made in case you need to access the records in the future.

Check washing is a process in which thieves use common household products to alter checks they stole out of mailboxes. After altering the checks, they then make the checks payable to themselves or other parties. Again, you can avoid falling victim to this by using pigmented ink pens, shredding any voided or incorrectly written checks, and monitoring your account balances to ensure that checks were cleared by the establishment you wrote the check out to. Usually, to avoid being caught, thieves will maintain the original amount of the check and simply change the payee information.