Texts and calls

The USPS Informed Delivery Account Suspension Text Scam, October 2026

Updated 22 October 2026

You assumed a frozen Informed Delivery account was a quick fix you could sort in two minutes. That is exactly what the sender is counting on, because the link in the text is not a fix, it is a fake USPS login built to catch the one time code your phone quietly receives. By the time the page tells you to try again, the scammer is already inside your real account, watching every piece of mail headed your way.

What the text actually says

The pitch lands in the SMS inbox like a routine heads up. A short message claims your USPS Informed Delivery account has been suspended because of unusual activity, and gives you a link to verify your identity. The wording is clipped, slightly formal, and is built to look like a system alert rather than a marketing blast. The link looks like it points to usps.com, but it does not. It points to a near copy of the real login that is hosted on a domain the sender registered days earlier, often with a country code TLD or a lookalike such as usps-secure-verify[.]com.

Informed Delivery is the real USPS service that emails you scanned images of the outside of incoming mail. It is a genuine target for criminals because it lets them watch your post. A thief who knows you are waiting on a new bank card, a government letter, or a parcel can show up and take it from the box before you do. That is why a takeover of the account is more useful to a scammer than a takeover of, say, a music streaming profile. The October 2026 wave of these texts is built around that exact idea, and the wording has tightened up since the spring, with shorter messages and fewer spelling errors.

You will usually see a sender number rather than a name, and the link is presented as a one time fix. There is no option to call, no real customer service number, and no path back to the real USPS through the message. The page the link opens asks for your USPS username and password first, then prompts you to enter a six digit code that arrives by SMS. That second step is the trap. The fake page is typing your username and password into the real USPS site in the background, which makes the real site send a real verification code to your phone. The code you type in is then relayed to the scammer, who is sitting on the other side of the relay. The page throws an error, you shrug, and the scammer is now logged in as you.

The tell, the law, and the recovery

The tell is in the second step. No real USPS account recovery will ever require you to type a code that is sent to your phone into the same page that asked for your password. The real site uses codes the other way round. You go to the real site, you enter your username and password, and the site sends a code to a method you set up in advance. The code confirms you are you, not the other way around. If a page asks for your password and a code in the same flow, it is collecting both at once. That is the single giveaway, and it is the same giveaway behind the SIM swap text, the bank fraud alert text, and the Apple ID sign in push that ran earlier in 2026.

There is also a more boring tell. The link does not match the real domain. The real Informed Delivery login lives at informeddelivery.usps.com, and the real USPS account login lives at account.usps.com. Anything else is a redirect. On a phone the full domain is often hidden behind a short link, but a long press on the link will show you where it really goes before you tap. If you cannot see the real domain, treat the message as hostile by default. The same rule covers every USPS scam that has run this year, from the redelivery fee text to the package intercept text to the present one.

Under federal law, the principal statute in play is 18 U.S.C. section 1028, which makes it a crime to produce, transfer, or possess a false identity document with intent to commit unlawful activity, and 18 U.S.C. section 1028A, which adds a mandatory two year sentence for any felony that involves fraud and identity theft. Wire fraud carries its own charge under 18 U.S.C. section 1343, with up to twenty years in federal prison and heavy fines. The relevant regulator is the United States Postal Inspection Service, which is the federal law enforcement arm of the USPS and the agency that actually pursues mail related fraud. Their spam@uspis.gov address is set up precisely for this kind of report, and they forward patterns to the wider network that the FBI and FTC read.

Recovery runs in a fixed order, and the order matters. First, forward the text to 7726, which is the short code the major US carriers set up for spam reporting. Second, forward the same text as an attachment to spam@uspis.gov so the Inspection Service can log it. Third, if you did tap the link and type anything in, go straight to account.usps.com on a clean browser, not through the link, and change your password to something you have never used before. Fourth, inside the same account, turn on two factor authentication and pick an authenticator app rather than SMS if the option exists. Fifth, revoke any active sessions the account shows, which is usually under Security or Login History. Sixth, check your Informed Delivery scan history for any addresses you do not recognise, and remove them. Seventh, place a free fraud alert with Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion, which by law lifts to the other two bureaus, and pull your free credit reports at annualcreditreport.com to look for new accounts.

If the scammer did get into the account and changed the recovery email or phone before you could lock them out, the recovery path is slower. You will need to call the USPS Informed Delivery support line at 1-800-ASK-USPS and prove your identity with the same documents you would use to open a PO Box. The Inspection Service also accepts identity theft reports through their website, and the FTC runs IdentityTheft.gov, which builds you an affidavit and a recovery plan in plain English. If a piece of mail you were expecting never turned up, file a missing mail claim at missingmail.usps.com so the carrier knows to look for it.

Why this scam hurts more than a normal phish

A normal phish costs you a password. This one costs you a window into your physical mail, which is a different kind of exposure. Informed Delivery does not show you the inside of sealed mail, but it does show the outside of every letter, the sender, the type of mail, and often the tracking number for parcels. A scammer inside the account can see that you are waiting on a new debit card from Chase, a replacement Social Security card, a tax transcript, a medical bill, a court summons, or a check from a side job. They can then plan a follow up. The classic follow up is a follow on text about the same piece of mail, this time pretending to be the bank, the SSA, or a court, with a link to a fake document download that drops malware on your phone or laptop.

There is also a quieter risk. The same password you use on the USPS site is, statistically, the same password you use somewhere else. People reuse passwords. If your USPS password is the one you also use for an email account, a streaming service, or a shopping site, you have just handed the scammer the keys to those as well. The fix is the standard fix. Move to a password manager, generate a long random password for every account that matters, and switch the second factor to an authenticator app. The free apps from Google, Microsoft, Authy, and 1Password all work. SMS is better than nothing, but it is the second factor the scammer in this scam is specifically trying to steal.

The October 2026 version of the scam has one new wrinkle worth flagging. Some of the messages now include a fake case number, such as a string of letters and digits formatted like USPS-2026-XXXX-XXXX, and a fake support phone number with a 202 or 703 area code. The case number is a prop. It exists to make the message look like a real ticket you can call back about. The phone number routes to a call centre staffed by the same crew that ran the fake login page, and the script is built to extract the verification code by pretending to walk you through a manual reset. Hang up. The real USPS does not call you about a suspended account, and they do not ask for a code over the phone.

What to do in the next ten minutes

If you are reading this because a text just came in, do this in order. Long press the link and confirm it does not point to a usps.com address. Do not tap it. Screenshot the message, then forward it to 7726. Forward the same screenshot as an attachment to spam@uspis.gov. Delete the message. If you already tapped and typed, change your USPS password from a clean browser, turn on two factor authentication, and check your active sessions. Then watch your mail for the next two weeks, because anything that was already in the Informed Delivery queue is now known to the scammer. If a piece of expected mail does not arrive, file a missing mail claim and contact the sender to stop and resend.

If a card or document was already in the mail and you cannot tell if it arrived, treat it as exposed. For a bank or card, call the number on the back of the card you still have and ask the issuer to monitor the account. For government mail, contact the issuing agency and ask for a replacement with a new tracking number. For medical mail, read the explanation of benefits that follows and call the insurer if a service you do not recognise shows up. None of this is fun. All of it is faster than finding out three months from now that someone opened a credit card in your name using a piece of mail you never opened.

This is general safety information, not legal advice. Scams change. If you need an official desk: FTC ReportFraud or IC3.