A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

Re:A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for... by Freak_NL on Wednesday December 29, 2021 @07:44AM (#29724305)

Using Berichtenbox is a liability. Once you activate the thing, all sorts of (semi-)government communication goes there, but you can't forward it or download it via an open API. You have to use their smartphone app or webapp.

The notifications you can set up to a normal email address invariably only say that institution X sent you a message, but never specify the topic. That means you have to login to see if it is actually important and actionable or just something you already knew or a confirmation of something you submitted.

Even worse is this common scenario:

* Get notification that X sent something to Berichtenbox

* Login to Berichtenbox (first get mobile phone for required 2FA)

* Message says new information is available in X's web portal

* Login to X's web portal (mijn.somethingsomething.nl)

* Read totally pointless message that could even have been sent in plain email

Compare this to the postal flow:

* Get letter, read it

I think these days you can deactivate Berichtenbox and receive important information via post again, but this was not an option in the first year or so, so even experimenting with it was risky.

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Re:A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for... by m4rtink on Wednesday December 29, 2021 @03:52PM (#29729870)

The Czech similar system (Datová Schránka) is similar and even worse:

* email notifications are unreliable * messages are considered delivered a week after landing in your data box, regardless of you reading them * old messages are automatically deleted after 90 days (!!!) unless you pay for an expensive and cumbersome archive addon service

Especially point number three makes the whole thing quite dangerous, not just liability - you might get an important message/request from the state while on long vacation/loose the notification and it will self erase - mission impossible style! And you will only find out when you re in trouble for not doing something important later...

Unless you plan to work with the data box daily and manually check the messages its really dangerous to use it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for... by teekert on Wednesday December 29, 2021 @08:43AM (#29724706)

Yeah, it does seem pretty bad indeed, especially for older or less tech inclined people. What would be a better solution? Perhaps Estonia's system. I guess many countries are starting their own experiments, in 10 years we may know what works well and what doesn't.

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