It is, yet I still routinely receive mail for two previous tenants of the house we now own. If you're a regular purchaser then yes it will be weird is suddenly a previous tenant starts receiving packages every few weeks on a regular interval and they're not getting returned.
But the real reason you shouldn't do it is that you don't actually get any deniability. John Doe who used to live at my address is not going to order drugs and ship them to my address. Especially if he's moved any reasonable distance, or is dead, or incarcerated, etc. It's no less obvious than just shipping them to yourself.
I'm still getting the occasional piece of mail for previous tenants and I've owned my house since 2004. Of course rampant package theft means anything sent to my house is stolen within minutes, so all you're doing is buying free stuff for thieves. I've long ago switched to a post office box.
It's entirely anecdotal of course but my wife bought a one-of-a-kind dress (trunk show sample) and it was stolen out of our mailbox. We found the packaging for another dress that came separately but couldn't find her $1,000 dress.
That was three or four years ago and I've had a PO Box ever since. So I thought my neighbors on nextdoor were exaggerating and then I was forced to have a package delivered because Google uses FedEx Ground for their slowest and cheapest option.
It was less than an hour between email notification of package delivery and my checking to find it gone. So add some buffer time in case the driver was slow to update the package status but still I'd say an hour to an an hour and a half was rotten luck or people are actively searching for packages. Probably both to be honest. I'm sure there's lots of confirmation bias there.
That sucks. I am in the suburbs of a fairly small city along the gulf coast, we mainly have issues with package theft in November/December. People just follow the UPS truck.
Rarely in the UK people pay for a redirect. Other than that the Postal Seervice don't really know who lives where. If your getting post for an ex tenant, that redirect isn't in place.
We deliver to addresses rather than names so our advice here would be to put a cross through the address and write on the item 'Not known at this address' or, 'No longer lives here' and post the item at your convenience - you won't need to apply any postage. Where applicable we will return the item to the sender hopefully allowing them to update their records.
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And even then it won't all stop. The direct marketers don't care and some financial companies are bound by law to keep sending the letters if they don't have an updated address for the old residents.
After we started doing this we got a couple of letters from the likes of Zurich Ltd addressed "to the householder" explaining that they'd love to stop sending us junk, but they have to, and if we could give them any details about where the old residents might be, that would be great. I wished them luck and told them the best we knew they'd moved abroad, permanently, possibly to Turkey.
Mildly off topic but I was a postman for a few years and the advice you linked to will get you almost all the way. Next time you get a letter that isn't for you put a big circle around the label, then put a cross through the circle. Don't write anything on it, but next time you see the postman give it directly to him/her/them and ask them to put it in with the blind letters. That will work. Probably.
I frequently receive mail for people who haven't lived in this house for a decade, so I challenge your assumption. The postman isn't paid enough to care.
In the countries you mention, individual apartments don't have numbers, but are rather identified entirely by the name(s) of the occupants. If the parcel is not addressed with your name you won't receive it.
Send it to a friend of yours that doesn't do drugs but will give it to you.
Edit: reason I wrote that, is that I remember one time, some dude found weed on the street, and since he didn't smoke he gave it to hit friend. So the same here. (But it's a joke cause mail+drugs+address+police no bueno)
