Truth is, once registered at an address in Germany one is fully transparent to and trackable by all domestic actors - public, malicious, predatory. Any privacy hysteria in Germany boils down to one of: "Americans will watch us" or "Slavs will steal our possesions". Then there is the cherry on the top "Slavs will use American system to steal our possesions".

Well, the Little Father Of The Russians -- pretty much an Über-Slav, no? -- already used American and British systems to steal a British referendum and an American election, so the cherry-on-top Germans seem to be the ones who got it right.

Not sure if serious or... heh.

> * Names on doorbells (yes, visible from the street).

You need these because somehow the concept of apartment numbers does not exist. As a result, mail and food delivery in large apartment buildings is interesting as well.

It seems pretty bizarre compared to all other countries I've ever sent mail to.

> * People using "loyalty cards" left and right, letting the merchants track their behaviour even if they pay with cash.

I'd argue that there is a pretty bimodal distribution of the population when it comes to privacy: Some people don't care at all and will use these cards, while others will fight every single bit of data stored about them tooth and nail.

> * Giving a stack of papers (including ID copy, salary statements etc) to a real estate owner to apply for a rental.

What's the problem here? Paper is inherently safe, unlike digital data. /s

Well, at least faxes have been officially declared equally safe (or unsafe) as email, which hopefully will finally kill them off as the communications technology of choice of the administration.