[red-indian]

Every year around a certain date, the meaning of which is opaque to me, I receive a package sent from the Strand bookstore containing a very nice expensive book. First couple years I called to ask who the sender was, they read back my name to me. I asked them to describe the purchaser, it took a bit of doing but indeed someone remember them and described what I look like. I've never been to New York or the Strand, but thanks whoever you are, who is impersonating me to send me expensive gifts, all of which were really cool books that I enjoyed.

[cm2012]

Clearly you from the future with an encoded message in the book.

[gimmeThaBeet]

If red-indian gets a sports almanac, how about a couple trifectas for the HN folks?

[khazhou]

That was me. I am you. I'm welcome.

[nothal]

Thank me.

[will_pseudonym]

Unironically, this could be a great movie idea.

[nothal]

If your name is atypical, maybe they looked you up on social media and described you based on that? Or maybe you're a very generic looking individual.

[rkho]

Fascinating, have you ever changed addresses since then? Curious if the packages still found their way to you after a change of address.

[jrockway]

Unfortunately, names and addresses are out there and easy to get. You can easily find my home address because the FCC requires me to keep it up to date in order to maintain my amateur radio license.

The main effect of this is that I get ads for car insurance in morse code.

[wanderer2323]

Fascinating story, what kind of books do you send to yourself?

[red-indian]

So far they have all been "coffee table books", large books with photos and some text. The theme has always been indigenous issues throughout the world.

I assume that my mysterious benefactor is someone who used to read a blog I used to keep and then shut down. When I had the blog my address and name were obtainable from my site's whois records. There's also a possibility it's some old friend who is just being anonymous for some reason. I doubt it's something else but it could be I suppose.

On a separate but topically related issue I also receive packages from amazon of fairly obscure things which are usually relevant to me. Imagine that I had dinner with a friend of a friend who turned out to be a former Chinese Circus Bear Trainer. A week later from amazon I receive a starter kit for Circus Bear Training. And I pass it on to my acquaintance who finds it interesting I got it. It's not that but a similar thing. I wonder if it's random shipments as part of some scam I can't imagine to comprehend. I think that it was a Bear kit after meeting with a Bear person is actually a coincidence and I'm reading too much into it since no interpretations other than weird scam make sense. I don't worry about any of these anymore and instead get excited when I receive a new bizarre shipment on an erratic irregular schedule, and show off the package to my friends and family who find the whole thing fairly hilarious. And some of them report to me that they too get random mis-shipments from amazon. While acknowledging that the Bear Kit takes the cake. So maybe Amazon's system is just messed up somehow.

[joecool1029]

The amazon ones sounds like 'brushing' scam which is a pretty easy to understand. Read more about it here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/27/american...

It's something that is hopefully going to fall into decline now that shipping rates are becoming more balanced.

[red-indian]

Thank you. I've received some of those too, a small package of pencils for example shipped from China, and I agree those are probably that scam. The key is that the product is of incredibly low value.

This doesn't match though the higher value items, costing dozens to low hundreds of dollars, which I've inexplicably received, and which seem to be related to random things I've done recently that are unique. Those shipments I feel reasonably are bizarre and unusual and otherwise reasonable explanations of scams just don't explain them.

[beagle3]

Obviously, your twin brother (of whom you are not aware, but who is aware of you and your whereabouts) is sending you a reminder for something (parent's anniversary? the day of his or your adoption?)