[e12e]

Consider this: your former employer receive a closed envelope addressed to you, c/o workplace, from a medical clinic. Would you assume the employer could open and read this mail?

I'm sure jurisdictions vary, but in Norway, excepting any written concent, your employer may not read mail addressed to you by name.

Personally addressed work email likely (but not certainly) fall in a similar category.

[mikepurvis]

I get the analogy, but I'm really not sure it applies in practice.

Like, who would use their work mailing address with a medical clinic? The only physical mail I've ever had sent to my workplace is maybe the occasional December parcel that I need to conceal from its ultimate recipient. We're long past the days where anyone's work email address is their only (or even primary) email address.

[Symbiote]

Someone working somewhere "temporarily" (however long that may be) and living in company-provided accommodation, or where that is more secure than private accommodation.

- A politician with a state-provided residence in the capital city.

- A soldier living in a barracks

- A teacher living at a boarding school during the term, or someone very senior at a university with an on-campus house/apartment. Or a PhD student.

- A vicar or priest living at the vicarage

- A diplomat or embassy staff posted abroad

[mikepurvis]

Those are good examples, though in most of them it's still clearly a residence, not a workplace. So I would expect there to be protocols in place for securely forwarding items which are personal in nature— particularly since this is not a tech problem, it's something people in these kinds of roles would have been dealing with decades ago.

Certainly for myself many years ago as a university student, I acknowledged that my lodgings were temporary and had anything of any importance at all sent to my parents' address.

[pwg]

> We're long past the days where anyone's work email address is their only (or even primary) email address.

You'd be surprised. For those of us here on HN, your statement has been true for decades (for some of us).

But for the average 'worker', there are still way too many who's only computer is the 'work laptop' and who's only email address is 'the work email address'. This tends to be the tech-unsavy and/or tech-fearful crowd that falls into this bucket (who also don't browse HN, so we never interact with them here), but they are still present, and there are far more in this bucket than most tech-savy folks realize.

[goatinaboat]

But for the average 'worker', there are still way too many who's only computer is the 'work laptop' and who's only email address is 'the work email address'

As recently as 10 years ago I would have agreed but now smartphones and tablets are so common I think more people have an email-capable personal device, and probably a “free” email address.

[pwg]

Sadly, no...

Just about a month or so ago the union at $job emailed around to again warn members that, yes, management does monitor your work machines, and indicated that just recently several employees were targeted for using their work laptop at home, after hours, for personal purposes, and one of the personal purposes was one of the specific 'uses' (porn) that management keeps a close watch out for and goes after users for accessing on their work machines.

[saagarjha]

Perhaps an on-campus or company-affiliated clinic?

[e12e]

> Like, who would use their work mailing address with a medical clinic?

Someone hiding their visit from a spouse?

[dvtrn]

https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/judicial/admin-decisions/2...