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Finland Postal Workers Will Open, Scan and Send Digital Copies of Mail

by Caleb Johnson on April 5, 2010 at 11:10 AM

A new experiment being conducted by Finland's postal service could raise privacy questions. According to the Telegraph, the European nation will begin a trial next week in which residents can volunteer to have their physical mail opened, scanned, and sent to them digitally by a postal worker. If you sign up, you'll receive an e-mail or text message notifying you that your mail has been sent to a secure digital mailbox. That's right, no more boxes stuffed with paper.

Itella, the state-owned company that's responsible for the postal service, hopes to cut down on the number of mail carriers, carbon emissions and paper waste by delivering less mail on fewer days. In Anttila, an area in southern Finland, 126 households and 20 businesses have volunteered for the service. While Itella claims the process is strictly confidential, there will still be privacy questions. But Tommi Tikka, director at Itella, reassured the Telegraph that the service was safe and secure. "This is totally different from e-mail. It is comparable to Web banking," he said.

While it could save money and cut down on waste, we still aren't sure how comfortable we would be with a system like this. After all, there's no way to guarantee that postal workers wouldn't read our mail, or worse, steal information from it. [From: the Telegraph]

Tags: email, finland, green, itella, mail, paper, paperless, postalservice, postoffice, privacy, top

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