[ababab]

Not for the government, but I know some coworkers who do the same thing. Terrible idea to not completely decouple work and personal technology. There's no recovery process you couldn't achieve with a google, live, and yahoo account.

[VLM]

Well, sure there's a recovery process you couldn't achieve with those three examples, there's having a fourth backup of using your work email. Its like a math proof trying to prove there exists a largest integer N, theres always N+1.

I do agree that far too many people rely on precisely one backup, if they even have that many.

There are peculiar catch 22 issues like I used to buy books from amazon and once they arrive decide if they're worth staying my property in which case I don't submit a reimbursement voucher or if they're not so good in which case I submit a reimbursement voucher. So technically I don't know if I'm doing personal or business purchasing until long after the transaction.

Another weird corner case is related to health insurance which is tied to employer (if any) in the USA. So emailing an insurance company about health related topics using the work email seems appropriate until you can't use that email anymore even though you're still employed and insured there. Ditto retirement accounts. There are probably people out there with health insurance and retirement accounts who have no non-work related internet access... maybe if they're a forrester stationed in the middle of nowhere or an undercover cop who doesn't want to be caught talking about benefits with the FBI HR person on his personal iphone.

[btown]

The concept of undercover agents in this mess is interesting - they can't just quit, but their entire support teams could conceivably be on furlough.