does "confidential" inspire confidence?

March 23rd, 2007

It's the second time I've seen an envelope addressed to one of my neighbors marked confidential. It's a regular white envelope, but across it they stamped CONFIDENTIAL in upper case, and below that Strictly confidential, must only be opened by addressee or something like that.

So they send this very important (presumably) information in the mail, and making sure noone is to open it but the recipient. I didn't open it, indeed I never open other people's mail cause I just don't feel that is good practice, nor do I care. But if I were nosy, a letter labeled confidential would pique my interest. I'd be much more keen to open that one than any other. So what are they trying to achieve here? Why not send it by registered mail so the recipient has to show a valid id and sign for it? That's a lot more of a confidential method.

Or did they send this one "confidential" to divert attention from some other letter in a plain envelope that actually had the secret information?

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2 Responses to "does "confidential" inspire confidence?"

  1. erik says:

    Probably just a PR stunt or something. If not, that's just silly indeed

  2. I agree with Erik, it's probably just some marketing ploy to get the recipient to open up a piece of junk mail.