These scammers probably aren't targetting specific individuals. They blast these messages out to a bunch of randos, and odds are very high that at least some of those are expecting packages just by chance. The marginal cost of an added message is tiny compared to the reward of one successful scam.
If you buy stuff with long delivery estimates, you might very well be even with relatively low numbers, Electronics from China, Custom Comissions or things with waitlists
Some of those can have over a month between purchase and reception, and might be shipped at arbitrary dates after purchase
I'm not that big of an online shopper, but there's certainly people that are
In Australia, if you buy something off AliExpress and use the budget shipping option, it will take anywhere from one week to two months to arrive. Shop there a couple of items a year and you're always expecting something.
What annoys me is that even the legit SMS notifications contain nothing identifiable about the package or sender, it's always "Your shipment #QWERTYUIOP is arriving by UnrelatedCourier between 1 AM and 11 PM today".
Maybe not in the world, but in my country (the Netherlands) in 2022 (last available data) there were 473 million packages send to 8.3 million households, which works out to a bit more than one package per household per week.
> But in a modern day and age, when aren’t you expecting a package?
Some people still prefer to buy most things directly in physical stores. For me, would be easier to list the few times when I am expecting a package. And even then, I'm expecting the package, not some random message about it; it usually arrives without any notification at all (and the tracking on the site is usually delayed).
What are you buying constantly? Apart from food and hygiene items, I mostly shop online. I feel I do order too much already, but the parcels are one every 1-2 months. Any more than that and the apartment would start filling up, I imagine.
I would be curious if FedEx specifically has some sort of leak though, it's super anecdotal but I seem to get more FedEx phishing attempts when I'm expecting a FedEx package.
You're right though that there are other mechanisms for this, it was around the holidays when this happened most recently. Plus humans tend to remember salient things and I probably more easily forget the ones that come when I'm expecting nothing.
Anyway, if their systems were better it would be easier to avoid scams without stress. I've never had to rely on external info for Amazon and it's true I'm often expecting something from them.
Nearly 100% of the time, I am expecting a notification from Canada Post or Amazon (FedEx less frequently, but still).
Even outside of that, you can often predict when people are expecting a package. Christmas. After various sales weeks.