[zx8080]

> I tracked her down on Facebook and mentioned it to her, and she seemed to get that it was a problem she might want to solve

Not a lawyer, but feels like you could be sued for a) reaching out and clearly mentioning you have some very private information.

How does it work for a paper mail - from what I understand it could be illegal to open any letter originated to some other person's name.

[rootusrootus]

> feels like you could be sued

As dysfunctional as the legal system seems to be at times, I'd be pretty surprised if she could find a lawyer willing to try that. At the very least, she'd half to pay a fair amount out of pocket just to initiate the suit, and this is someone who already hasn't shown much persistence in just getting the email address corrected with her provider.

A lawyer would presumably tell her that a case against me would certainly fail, and the healthcare provider has much deeper pockets. Go after them.

> How does it work for a paper mail - from what I understand it could be illegal to open any letter originated to some other person's name.

This is a federal law called "Obstruction of Correspondence" and it is fairly specific to USPS mail. It applies to letters & packages that are either in a postal facility (including the mailbox) or have transited through it. It does not apply to email.

[nucleardog]

Sued for what?

Unless he was trying to extort her he’s done nothing wrong.

Her healthcare provider, on the other hand, could be in some hot shit.

[ehPReth]

for paper mail here in Canada I just see it's not for me, mark a line though it and write "Return to Sender, no longer at address". Then it gets put in the outgoing mail system (a slot where I receive my mail, or could also take it directly to any standing postal box, or the post office). Then it goes back though the postal system (for free) to originating sender in most cases.

[rootusrootus]

For anyone else who runs across this, in the US you want to also put a line through the bar code at the bottom of the letter, so it cannot be scanned. Once a piece of mail gets that code, the post office stops reading anything else on the letter and just delivers the mail to where that code says it goes. So you can toss it back in an outgoing slot with 'return to sender' on it as many times as you like, and they'll just return it to you. Until you get lucky and the mail carrier sees it when gathering up the outgoing mail, and helpfully obscures that barcode for you.