4 ms·

Trusting "your life" to a third party service is very dangerous. Because if your life depends on that service, your life can't continue with out it, so I ask, w

Trusting "your life" to a third party service is very dangerous. Because if your life depends on that service, your life can't continue with out it, so I ask, why do this to yourself? The convenience is a serious trade off.

peterjlee 9y ago
What's the alternative though? It's not like Microsoft and Yahoo's email/calendar services are much better. Use a paper calendar and run your own private email server and hope you never have to run for president?
- macintux 9y ago
  Pay someone for the critical services you rely on. I'd never trust Google with my main email service; Fastmail.fm has been great to me. For calendaring, I rely on Apple; even if they were to somehow vanish, I'd still have 3 copies of my calendar lying around.
- smichel17 9y ago
  Buy your own domain name and forward your mail from an address on that domain to your gmail. Keep a backup of your email. If you lose access, just create a new account and update the address you're forwarding to. This is an absolute minimum of money (under $20/year), effort, and disruption to your current habits. Plus, you get to use whatever vanity email address you want.
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  > run your own private email server Why not? It works for a lot of people. I don't understand why some people are so eager to hand their personal data out to 3rd parties. This is a very do-able solution.
perl4ever 9y ago
The thing is, people round small risks to zero. As a heuristic, it's not correct, but there are so many possible small risks that it's impossible to round them all up to a significant amount either. Same principle leads to people accepting abusive licensing terms.
sandywotsits 9y ago
Honest question - what happens if you don't know the password on your Mac, Windows, Linux box? Are there routes to recover the information on the hard drive if the user does not have the password and there is no admin?

peterjlee 9y ago

What's the alternative though? It's not like Microsoft and Yahoo's email/calendar services are much better. Use a paper calendar and run your own private email server and hope you never have to run for president?

macintux 9y ago
Pay someone for the critical services you rely on. I'd never trust Google with my main email service; Fastmail.fm has been great to me. For calendaring, I rely on Apple; even if they were to somehow vanish, I'd still have 3 copies of my calendar lying around.
smichel17 9y ago
Buy your own domain name and forward your mail from an address on that domain to your gmail. Keep a backup of your email. If you lose access, just create a new account and update the address you're forwarding to. This is an absolute minimum of money (under $20/year), effort, and disruption to your current habits. Plus, you get to use whatever vanity email address you want.
CaptSpify 9y ago
> run your own private email server Why not? It works for a lot of people. I don't understand why some people are so eager to hand their personal data out to 3rd parties. This is a very do-able solution.

perl4ever 9y ago

The thing is, people round small risks to zero. As a heuristic, it's not correct, but there are so many possible small risks that it's impossible to round them all up to a significant amount either. Same principle leads to people accepting abusive licensing terms.

sandywotsits 9y ago

Honest question - what happens if you don't know the password on your Mac, Windows, Linux box? Are there routes to recover the information on the hard drive if the user does not have the password and there is no admin?