Slashdot Mirror
Finland To Try Scanning Snail Mail
will_die writes "In an effort to cut carbon emissions and reduce costs, Finland's postal company, Itella, has begun a pilot program wherein snail-mail letters are converted into PDFs and made viewable online by their addressees, instead or in advance of physical delivery. The effort is volunteer only — a little over 100 people and around 20 business as of last month — but it has already sparked concerns in Finland about privacy and government overreach. The volunteers will have images of all their letters viewable on a computer or phone. The postman will still arrive twice a week to deliver the scanned letters, as well as any packages or attachments. Additionally, the postal service will filter out junk mail."
april fools...
And if you get a birthday card with money in it? Who is to say you didn't get two 20's in that letter. The postal service was only able to locate one of those!
Or, say it's a private letter about financial information and now they have all your account information, oh and all your other personally identifiable information was in other letters that week so your identity is safe with you, and the person that opened all your mail.
It's just not a good idea in the long run. Maybe as an opt-in service for those who _know_ what is/isn't showing up in snail mail?
Old idea, new implementation.
PDFs instead of film negatives.
I'm a Finn. I've already got a filter for spam snail mail. I wrote "Ei mainoksia, kiitos" (no adds, please) to a sticker and placed it on top of my mail slot. The only post I get is postcards from friends and relatives twice a decade or so. Everything else is already digital..
Btw, you can still pay these paper bills online for free. I pay the small part of my dentist bill that insurance doesn't pay (have gone there forever, should find in network dentist) online. Plus, anybody you mail a check to has all of the info to get money out of your account.