Someone operating a small gratis online service in Germany posted an address for GDPR requests. I happened to be passing through the neighborhood so I went to the address to drop a cash donation in their box. But I was blocked because it was an apartment building with a locked front door and no access to mail slots which are apparently in the lobby. Buzzing yielded no answer, so I could not donate cash.

About half the apartment buildings on the street were designed to block public access to mailboxes. A bartender told me it was some kind of German privacy rule and that postal workers get a front door key to all such buildings. I don’t quite grasp the issue being solved. Mail slots can have flaps that prevent inadvertently seeing someone else’s mail. Is there a problem with malicious snoops probing into mailboxes with a camera? Or mail theft? If someone is so interested in snooping, wouldn’t they just wait until a legit resident uses the door and do a tailgate entry anyway?

Anything to increase security is a good idea in the absence of compromise. But this seems like a bad compromise because it means that Deutche Post has an exclusive monopoly on mail delivery (like USPS in the US). In the case at hand, I would not trust the postal network with cash.

Postal services are now threatened by relentless digitization. E.g.:

• Belgium has reduced non-priority mail delivery to just a few times per week
• Denmark has completely eliminated mail delivery (yikes!)

If the Denmark scenario were to play out in Germany, the mailboxes would be unreachable to 3rd party couriers. Maybe it’s favorable in the sense that the access restriction could actually prevent Germany from becoming as foolishly digital as Denmark.