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Comment by sbeller | Hacker News Reader

They tried something like that in Germany, but they got it wrong in the details:

Once you elect to communicate via this government blessed email, you are basically forced to check that email everyday notwithstanding your ability (e.g. when your computer/internet breaks) as the communication is considered delivered once it hits your (e-)mail box.

For example if you are summoned to court (and it is a felony to not show up), I'd think I'd prefer snail mail for those communications, as I'd trust my "tech stack" of a physical mail box on the receiving side a bit more than some government blessed email provider.

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That sounds more like mostly a technical problem. You could simply configure forwarding from your gov. email account to your personal one. You could create filters to only care about certain domains to prevent spam.

It's still a lot easier to check email than walk to a mailbox daily. But the best solution is probably to default to both email & mail such that the email can be send when the letter is sent but neither would be considered a delivered message until the letter itself was delivered.

Good point.

Also, once spammers/scammers get ahold of it (I give it ten minutes), you are truly screwed.

I think if you limited it to only sanctioned communications you'd limit this problem quickly (think only .gov email addresses can email it, for instance, and/or other sanctioned domains)

If we wanted to, we should provide two emails to the general public. A restricted communications one following the rules I suggest above, and perhaps a more general purpose one for those who want to use that, with the only requirement that you already signed up for the first one).

I know that's convoluted. It's just one idea of course. I think we could deal with this problem.

Also the gov being the gov, they could just mandate Google provide spam filter protections or something.

I think the Danish version of this, "E-boks", have been mandated for some years and it mostly works fine. There are a few issues now and then and it is difficult for the older population but I think that it overall have worked fine. And by far most people agree with it here.

Although this is not true email but a special message system that needs two factor auth to log in.

Huh? I check my paper mail box once per month.

>For example if you are summoned to court

Aren't such thing delivered under signature?

exactly. How would that work in an electronic setting?

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