We’re constantly being told that we need to be vigilant online, protecting our bank details, only using our credit cards on reputable sites, watching out for phishing scams, using electronic card readers and PINs and passwords and security questions and all the rest of it. And, y’know, yeah, fair enough, we should be careful with our information online. But what about offline?

My mother always, without fail, shreds documents containing confidential information, so that no-one could steal post from her bins to rip her off. I use a slightly less high-tech method known as “ripping stuff up” whenever I throw anything away, and when I moved house, my bank was one of the first to know about it. (Though, granted, they still reckoned it’d take weeks and weeks before my change of address actually kicked in.) Yet I’m still getting bucketloads of post to my new flat addressed to the previous tenants.

Very often, this post is just spam - letters from Weight Watchers begging the previous tenant to come back to them, for instance, or appeals from charities. But in the last week or so, I’ve started getting slightly more important mail. Like a credit card (which handily signalled its presence via a clear window in the envelope). And bank statements.

I moved into this flat at the end of February: seven weeks ago. Even taking into account delays in getting things changed at credit card companies and banks, I shouldn’t still be getting this stuff. I’ve been diligently writing “no longer resident at this address, please return to sender” on all the envelopes and entrusting them back into the care of Royal Mail from the beginning - now I’ve started writing “no longer resident at this address, please return to sender SO THAT THEY MIGHT UPDATE THEIR RECORDS” on things. I actually got a letter back from one company addressed to “the occupier” telling me that their records showed Miss A. Previous-Tenant lived at my address, and if that was no longer the case and I had information about her present whereabouts, I should contact them and let them know. But of course I haven’t got any such information — I never met the previous tenant. She’d moved out before I moved in, and so all I know about her is that she used to be a Sky customer, used to be a member of Weight Watchers, and, oh yes, which bank she’s a customer of.

If I were inclined towards identity fraud, though, it really wouldn’t be difficult to take her for a ride. She’s dropped all her information into my hands. I have all her bank details, and I know her name and address. I had, before I sent it back, an actual credit card, and probably the PIN for it in another letter, too. No matter how obsessively she might check her credit card statement, she wouldn’t know if I’d run up a debt of several thousand pounds, because the statement? Would be delivered to my address.

This is starting to drive me batty, quite frankly. I’m fed up of my mailbox being full of someone else’s mail, and it makes me cringe when I realise how careless she’s being with so much information. What’s the point of being careful with your credit card online when you’ve delivered all your personal information to someone else - someone you’ve never met, wouldn’t recognise on the street, someone you know literally nothing about? Please, if you’re out there, and you know you recently moved and didn’t update any of your records: LET YOUR BANK KNOW YOU’VE MOVED. I’m not going to rip you off, I’m going to keep returning your mail to sender and hoping they somehow manage to get in touch with you, but really, this is beyond a joke.