MINNEAPOLIS — As Amazon gobbles up more of your business, porch piracy has exploded. According to The Package Guard, 11 million homeowners have had a package stolen during the past year and the average value of those packages was between $50-$100. A new study says package theft is much more rampant in some cities — ahem, San Francisco — than others.



Shorr Packaging Corp., authors of an extensive package theft study last year, sought out to identify the worst places in America for package theft by looking at geo-targeted Google search data. Their new study, released this month, ranked Minneapolis third overall in stolen Amazon packages, sandwiched between Seattle and Boston. The rankings were determined by looking at the ratio of residents per search.

The authors noted that the number of searches does not represent the actual number of packages stolen; it only represents a "very small fraction" of victims of Amazon packages theft who chose to Google that phrase. Shorr used Google AdWords to come up with rolling monthly averages for the search phrase in America's 50 most populated cities. It then calculated the prevalence of searches by figuring out the number of searches per capita, as well as the inverse of that ratio, persons per search.

Here are the 10 worst places in America for Amazon package theft: San Francisco Seattle Minneapolis Boston Portland, OR Washington D.C. Oakland, CA Baltimore, MD Atlanta, GA Sacramento, CA Shorr noted a couple "fascinating trends" though that could be gleaned from the latest analysis.

"Take, for example, the fact that package theft is pervasive in many of the country's most notable technology hubs, including San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Seattle, Boston and Washington, D.C.," the study said.

The authors also pointed out there is a high concentration of wealth in those cities, which could mean there are more packages to steal (wealthier people order more things) or that the packages contain more valuable items.

Shorr checked its findings against the FBI's national crime statistic and found that many cities with high larceny-theft rates also showed high search prevalence for "Amazon package stolen." Among those cities: San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Oakland, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Cities that showed low rates of both larceny-theft and search included El Paso, Detroit, Mesa and Virginia Beach.