KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Research found last year that more than 30% of consumers started their holiday shopping before the end of October.
This year, one in five shoppers said they were starting in October or earlier, according to a Facebook survey.
Many of those packages left on doorsteps are susceptible to theft. Texas has a new law that targets porch pirates with a felony charge, but in Tennessee, that theft is still a misdemeanor for the most part.
"The law's going to have to continue to evolve," said attorney T. Scott Jones.
Research shows 11 million homeowners had a package stolen in 2016. That number has been on the rise since and so has the increase in porch pirates.
During the holiday season last year, the United States Postal Service delivered around 15 billion pieces of mail and 900 million packages.
"When you actually take something from a mailbox it by definition is a federal crime," said Jones.
He said federal law only covers theft from mail carried by USPS resulting in a federal theft related felony.
"Whereas if it's a package from other carriers like UPS, FedEx, it doesn't rise to the level of a federal crime," he said.
UPS expects to deliver more than 800 million packages this holiday season, but Jones says in Tennessee the value of the stolen item determines the consequence between misdemeanor and felony.
"You might see a situation where the police might aggregate, add up the number of packages to get to that felony level and get to an E felony," he said.
But as times are changing, Jones expects Tennessee to follow Texas' lead sooner rather than later by creating a law to target those pesky porch pirates.
"I wouldn't be surprised at all if we saw at our next upcoming legislative session a bill introduced to deal with these thefts from people's homes," he said.
To protect yourself from porch pirates, the BBB recommends shipping packages to a work place instead of a home, or having them placed in a specific out of sight location.