All you need to know about e-Boks

Denmark is very lucky to enjoy a high level of digitisation. As a small country there is a lot of opportunity to streamline public services with the use of digital technology. The e-Boks system is a perfect example of this.

I wanted to share an experience I recently had with my e-Boks. I had some routine surgery done a few weeks ago and as part of the process they took some cells away for analysis. Not much was made of this but it was a screening for cancer. I didn’t think much about the results. A week later I received a text from the hospital* telling me they would be sending me a letter via my e-Boks by 8am the next morning. It struck me as odd as I’d never had this before. Later that day it dawned on my the seriousness of the mail and I checked my e-Boks. It was a clear result. I felt enormously grateful for this system. Instead of waiting several days to hear the result via the traditional postal system (which quite frankly under PostNord is abysmal) which could take some time, I was almost immediately told my result. Also if I’d received an email saying I had a message from the hospital I may have not checked it immediately but with the integrated system used by the hospital I was ready to look.

But what is e-Boks?

e-Boks is the one of the two places where you can access encrypted digital post.

Digital Post from public authorities is the same kind of communications that you may receive in your physical mailbox from, for example, the local government, hospital or SKAT. It might be patient calls, message about space for your child in a day care centre, or personal tax matters.

Private companies, such as insurance companies and banks also send digital post to their clients. Here it may be, for example, statements or bank statements. The difference from traditional paper mail and an e-mail is that Digital Post should be received and read on a secure Internet site.

The secure websites where you can read Digital Post is borger.dk or e-Boks.dk. The digital post sent encrypted. This means that security is very high — even higher than ordinary paper mail or e-mails. e-Boks now also comes as a mobile app.

It is required that all citizens above the age of 15 have to sign up for Digital Post. Your digital mailbox is connected to your CPR number, so it will follow you, even if you change email, postal address, etc.

You can save mails and important documents here. You get a personal email when there is digital post for you.

You log onto e-Boks using your NemID and you can find out how to set up Digital Post from the link below. Scroll down to the bottom of the e-Boks homepage to change the language to English.If you use the mobile app on an iPhone you can use touchID to log in which can be more convenient.

If you found this post useful you may be interested in getting hold of my Guide to Danish Bureaucracy. This guide pulls together publicly available resources, including the information above, into one simple to use document with check lists to make sure you are fully prepared. You can buy the guide here

I wanted to also address the question of why I charge for some guides. The main reasons are these guides have taken me time to research and write and to make them easy to use and attractive to look at I use a designer to create the finished product. I also offer a lot of free resources and information both here on this blog and also via my website. But nothing is free, I pay for the hosting of both websites plus a number of other costs associated with running an online business so there are times that I, rightly, ask for payment for my work. In exchange you are able to gain a lot of information easily, some of which may take you a lot of time to find or you may even miss. You also get the benefit of my ten years of experience of living in Copenhagen.

*Please note this was a private hospital not the public sector.