“Porch Piracy” on the rise during holidays

Package theft is on the rise and postal delivery companies says it’s even worse during the holidays.

Ups spokeswoman Natalie Norrington says December 22nd is their busiest delivery day of the year. More than 630 million packages are expected to be dropped off that day alone.

“As we’re delivering more packages those holiday crooks they know that people are doing online shopping,” says Norrington. “They know that people are buying Christmas gifts.”

Porch Pirates stealing packages right from your doorstep and UPS says thieves getting more bold and blatant.

“We do have people that follow behind UPS delivery trucks but again also FedEx and the Postal Service drivers and unfortunately they go and they take packages that don’t belong to them,” says Norrignton.

Rick Deckman says he was shocked at his surveillance footage.

“I couldn’t believe that this was actually happening,” says Deckman. “he was in such a hurry just to go get the boxes, get out of here and go follow the ups truck to another location.”

UPS says one way to protect your packages is to sign up for their My Choice program. They will email or text you the day before your package arrives so you can make the necessary arrangements and/or even leave special instructions for the driver. You can also have you package delivered to an alternate location using UPS’s new Access Point Network. So far there are only three locations in Southwest Florida. However, businesses can sign up to become a Access Point Location by going to their website.

“There are small businesses that are in your community that are dry cleaners, convenience stores or delis or we have some florists that will accept your ups package and you can go there and pick it up in the evening or on the weekends,” says Norrington. Right now, there are only three Access Point locations

Developers in San Francisco says they’ve come up with a solution to porch piracy. They are working on a mobile app called Doorman. The company hold your packages in a warehouse until you schedule a time for them to deliver it to your home, when you know you will be there. The Doorman app is not yet available in Southwest Florida but online shoppers in the area hope it will be soon.