Once you’ve made an order and received confirmation, your shipment is booked, and the courier company will provide you with a tracking number. This is a unique code attributed to your parcel which enables watching its status and location on the way. It’s not strange if for different reasons you may need giving your tracking number to another person. There may or may not be consequences when you decide to share the tracking number of your parcel. Continue reading to know when it is safe to do it and in what cases it is better to keep it confidential.

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Sharing a tracking id with someone else – when can you do it?

Tracking number is a piece of confidential information sent usually to your personal e-mail. In some cases, you may need to share your tracking id with people who can act on your behalf. You can share your parcel tracking number with:

1. A relative or a friend you trust

If you know for sure that you can’t be present at the delivery address when the courier comes, you may need to ask a close friend or relative to help you out. And, as it’s not convenient to check where is the parcel, when you are on the road or simply busy, you can provide your friend or brother with the tracking id.

2. A neighbour

Similarly, if you live alone and need your package to be delivered before you come home, you can kindly ask your neighbour to track it and receive it instead of you.

3. A colleague

Usually, in big companies, there is someone responsible for taking care of the shipping processes of the company. When you place an order on the name of your company, you can share the tracking number with this person. But be careful to share it confidentially only with this colleague. Imagine how much your company can lose, if you provide the tracking id to the wrong person!

Of course, you may have some other colleague who you trust and with whom you don’t have to worry about possible consequences of sharing the tracking number of a parcel with them.

When should you keep the tracking number confidential?

Whenever you need to share a tracking number with another person is most probably because you need some help. It can be either about the collection of your parcel or just because you need a piece of advice and information. However, even if it seems harmless many times, sharing a tracking id with someone you don’t know can have serious consequences. Let’s see with whom it is not appropriate sharing the tracking id of your parcel:

1. People on forums.

It’s a common thing nowadays to ask whatever matter you don’t know on the forums. And if, for instance, you don’t see the proper information regarding the status of your parcel displayed when you insert the tracking code online and you may feel like asking for help on a forum is the way to go. However, remember that you never know who is sitting behind the screen and can’t be sure about the consequences of it.

2. Unidentified person.

Whether somebody asks you to prove the information of the order or you just want to ask for help, never share the tracking number with those you don’t know at all.

Consequences of sharing the tracking id of a parcel with the wrong people

But what if somebody gets your tracking code accidentally, what they can do? Have a look at the consequences of sharing the tracking number of a parcel with the wrong people:

Reroute a package with a tracking id

Let’s assume that someone, who you don’t trust or don’t even know, get your tracking number. The first thing that comes to mind is that this person will try to reroute your package to his address with the help of your parcel’s tracking id. Indeed, it is possible to change the delivery address knowing this code and send the parcel even to another country. The general process would be to call or write to us or to the courier company you booked the service with and ask them to do it. When we have such requests, we always send a form for inserting a new address to your e-mail. So, if somebody has access to the e-mail provided with the order, they will be able to change the address.

Someone signed for my parcel and stole it!

It may happen that when no one is at home, a random neighbour offers to keep the parcel. Here is the importance of always picking up the phone when the courier calls, carefully checking that the address is correct and informing about an alternative address. When you want somebody to pick up your parcel, just inform the courier company about this for a courier to know in advance. This will probably help to avoid such unpleasant situations.

Is it possible to steal my personal data by using a shipping tracking id?

Nobody wants to share their personal information with people they don’t know. Besides, it could be dangerous, that’s why this question disturbs us. Tracking id allows you to see the parcel number, shipment number, the parcel status and its location. No personal data is shown in the tracking system. Also, at Eurosender we do not share any personal data when the customer contacts us to reroute a package with its tracking id, for instance. Nevertheless, we can’t guarantee that somebody calls the courier company and gets known your data. It is extremely unlikely to happen and probably the tracking number won’t be enough to get your data.

What should I do if somebody has got my tracking number?

Reading this article, you’ve realized that sharing your tracking number on a forum could be a mistake and what are the possible consequences of sharing a tracking id with the wrong person. So, what should you do?

To prevent the described possible problems, contact our customer support and tell us about the issue. For example, if you are afraid that someone might try to reroute your parcel, inform us or the courier specifically that the delivery address cannot be changed by anyone else.

Now you know how to make your shipping process safer. As it is said forewarned is forearmed. If you have shared the tracking number and suspect somebody would be able to steal your parcel, don’t panic and contact us.