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> “I am tired of listening to people screaming their lungs out about privacy when their actions don't reflect their opinions.” Those screaming for privacy, lik

> “I am tired of listening to people screaming their lungs out about privacy when their actions don't reflect their opinions.” Those screaming for privacy, like myself, are in fact a small minority. Also regardless of the topic, double standards are rampant in this community. You’ll often see people screaming against Google but still using @gmail.com because paying for a domain and the price of one coffee per month is too expensive. Or people claiming that they need ad-blockers for privacy, but then screaming against paywalls.

dwighttk 8y ago
I keep my gmail because my self hosted email’s ip sometimes gets put on spam lists (probably by gmail admins.)
devxpy 8y ago
> paying for a domain and the price of one coffee per month That's some expensive coffee.
- bad_user 8y ago
  My FastMail account costs $50 / year or $130 / 3 years, thus with a monthly cost starting at 3.6 USD. That's less than the price of a Starbucks Grande Latte. Google's G Suite, which is still better than free web mail since you no longer have the lock-in, plus a better privacy policy, is $5 per month, which is almost the price of a Starbucks Venti Latte. And this is actually an expensive offering in the business. So no, it's not an expensive coffee, especially since we are talking about a highly skilled and highly paid demographic. Also I'm from Romania where we have a lower cost of living and lower wages to go with it, so seeing my Silicon Valley brethren complaining about the price of paying for non-free email on your own domain is really awkward, given the importance of email. I get it, I hate subscriptions for software too. But not when that service is essential for your profession, your security or your privacy and email is all of the above.
  - Freak_NL 8y ago
    > That's less than the price of a Starbucks Grande Latte. A cup of coffee is a pretty lousy indication of cost. For some people going into a Starbucks for a $5/€4,40/£3,92 gluten-free-unicorn-sprinkles-ariana-grande-latte may be part of a daily routine, but for others, coffee means using a coffee-maker to brew your own cup for a few cents, or just getting a cup to go at a some kiosk.
    - bad_user 8y ago
      My point is that many of us drink such beverages every couple of days at least and in order to pay for your email address basically implies the same effort as buying a Starbucks Grande Latte. And your email address is your online identity and has plenty of information in it that shouldn't leak, including your entire online purchasing history at least. I am against paying for crap via subscriptions, I hate the subscriptions trend myself, but email in my opinion is fundamental to who we are and what we do online.
    - kup0 8y ago
      I think that's a pedantic detail that actually ignores the point being made. I've seen the "cheaper the the cost of a coffee per month!" type of phrasing used to commonly refer to Starbucks/etc I almost never buy coffee out anywhere like Starbucks, but it was easy for me to understand in the context of his post
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- morganvachon 8y ago
  You can run your own email server via Vultr or DO for $5/month or less. You have to do some work to maintain it so there's the cost of time invested, so maybe two coffees/month. You can also opt for Fastmail or ProtonMail, or similar privacy-respecting email services, and again you're getting it for less than $5/month. I use Fastmail for my main email account and I love it. I use Tiger Technologies (https://tigertech.net https://tigertech.net) for hosting mine and my wife's personal sites and email, they are all I need for basic Wordpress/email hosting and they have a superb support team. If I decide I want to get my hands dirty with running a server, I use Vultr.
- ilikehurdles 8y ago
  G Suite for a domain and email is $5-6/mo. A cappuccino in SF I guess is a better analogy.
  - bad_user 8y ago
    If you go for the annual plan it's $4.16. Also the much better deal is the business edition, at $10 per month, which also gives you unlimited GDrive storage. Couple that with something like ArqBackup, Rclone, etc and it gets to be very cost effective, being cheaper than a Dropbox subscription. Also the Terms of Service for G Suite is meant for businesses and thus much better. Just be careful when buying apps and books from Google Play. If you don't want to be locked-in, don't purchase anything that can't be migrated.
moccachino 8y ago
To be fair it does take much more than $20 worth of effort to migrate all your stuff from gmail. How much more I don't know since I've yet to do it, even though I've been paying for another email service for more than a year.
- mstade 8y ago
  Man, I pay $50/year for my Fastmail account. I use a custom domain, so total cost is a bit higher, probably something like $60-$70/year, not sure. Moving from gmail to fastmail, given their integrated migration process, was a complete breeze. I still have gmail forwarding set up to my new email address, but I haven't logged into the account for well over two years at this point. This reminds me to actually check how many emails I received over the past year that came via gmail. Off the top of my head I can only recall a single one, at least from a person I know and wanted to receive email from. I swiftly replied with my new address of course. I'm going to stop forwarding now, and set up an auto-reply to give people a new address. Not my personal one, but an alias I'll set up in a minute, so that I can shut that down eventually too. Probably useless paranoia, but it floats my boat. I don't regret the move one bit, and the whole process of setting up my account and moving all ten or so years worth of email from gmail to Fastmail was over and done within a week. Fastmail does what it says on the tin – it's very fast. It also pretty much never fails. In the past two or so years that I've had my account I have only experienced downtime once, for a few minutes. I made myself some coffee and then service was back again. I am not affiliated with Fastmail in any way, shape or form – just a very happy customer.
  - kakarot 8y ago
    How is hosting your data with Fastmail and allowing them to sniff your traffic better than hosting with Google? Out of the frying pan and into the fire, if you ask me.
    - mstade 8y ago
      Sure, but that's a different discussion altogether. The post I replied to was implying the effort is greater and more complex than most think, and I'm saying it probably isn't – at least not for the common cases. Privacy is a very real concern, but a different conversation.
bayindirh 8y ago
The problem with GMail is, it's too convenient to use, and relatively secure because of 2FA support. Also, people (including me) think that some newsletters, some bills and receipts are not very personal, so people don't care. I have two main addresses, one is from a local provider and my all financial e-mails and other stuff is coming to that e-mail address, however they don't encrypt anything. I also just got a free Proton mail, and will upgrade the account when I'm a little better off. Paid e-mail addresses are not meaningless, but they're harder to justify in most people's eyes. BTW, I never store anything which makes me uncomfortable, anywhere incl. my brain. That's a much better way of living. Not that privacy conscious people is hiding something, but that's my policy.
- bad_user 8y ago
  G Suite from Google is still Gmail, but with a better terms of use and usage of your own domain and thus no lock-in. For people that like Gmail it’s a much better alternative. My point was that people aren’t willing to vote with their wallet, but being a loud mouth doesn’t cost anything. And that’s how we end up with monopolies. On the topic at hand I still remember the people crying against Firefox’s Pocket integration. Well, as Chrome crushes its competition, while becoming more invasive everyday, I hope they are happy with the outcome.
  - cascom 8y ago
    I’ve been planning on ditching gmail for a while, but I can’t find a domain name for my perineal email (either taken or don’t love) that I want to use for the next 10+ years!!!
    - dubya 8y ago
      > my perineal email taint.net seems to be for sale.
      - cascom 8y ago
        LOL
internalfx 8y ago
I have run a Zimbra server for several years now, it's a full size enterprise grade email server. I can run it on a $10 droplet from Digital Ocean. $10 is kinda high just for my email, but the bonus is I host _all_ my family's mail. Wife, kids even mom and dad! It's been nice not being concerned about email privacy. Zimbra is a great piece of software. I think more people should look into it.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  I don't trust myself enough to run my own mail server; did you set up your own backups? What's the uptime / SLA (not that gmail has any but still)? Do you need to set up and manage security yourself?
  - y4mi 8y ago
    i'm not the parent poster, but did host my mail own for a while. 99.99+ uptime for mail is generally not as important, as undelivered emails get resend if it wasn't up at the time of delivery. it might still be a problem, because its technically possible to disable that feature, but its generally done everywhere. the bigger problem is, iirc, that the biggest mail provider (gmail) pushes unknown mail servers to spam... so you'll probably be forced to use a relay. thats still not a big problem, because you generally get one from you domain registrar there are also fully functional mail implementations that you can use right away with minimal configuration such as MailInABox [0] ...still, i've switched to fastmail ~2 yrs ago and won't be going back to self hosted anytime soon, though i do own several servers i could use for that... [0] https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/
  - blacksmith_tb 8y ago
    I am not running a mail server on DO, but I do have several other services on their VMs, and they will do automated backups for you for a few USD per month.
  - internalfx 8y ago
    DO makes backups easy. It Rarely ever goes down (maybe twice in 4 years? I have to think really hard to remember an outage, it's just kinda always....there.) I periodically run: sudo apt update sudo apt full-upgrade Honestly it takes very little of my time, and Zimbra is a really awesome email system.
jimmy1 8y ago
> Also regardless of the topic, double standards are rampant in this community. Most of us speak out against against Google because we like most of Google and want to continue to use their services, just not to thrilled about some things and want them to shape up, not have them cease to exist completely. It's the difference between being reasoned or extreme.
tim333 8y ago
>double standards are rampant I'm not that bothered about the type of privacy Chrome invades. If someone put a camera in my bedroom I'm bothered but if Google knows I'm thinking of fixing my washing machine and tries to advertise to me it doesn't bother me. But say that and you get down voted etc by the "people screaming their lungs out about privacy" crowd. So us types kind of keep quiet.

dwighttk 8y ago

I keep my gmail because my self hosted email’s ip sometimes gets put on spam lists (probably by gmail admins.)

devxpy 8y ago

> paying for a domain and the price of one coffee per month That's some expensive coffee.

bad_user 8y ago
My FastMail account costs $50 / year or $130 / 3 years, thus with a monthly cost starting at 3.6 USD. That's less than the price of a Starbucks Grande Latte. Google's G Suite, which is still better than free web mail since you no longer have the lock-in, plus a better privacy policy, is $5 per month, which is almost the price of a Starbucks Venti Latte. And this is actually an expensive offering in the business. So no, it's not an expensive coffee, especially since we are talking about a highly skilled and highly paid demographic. Also I'm from Romania where we have a lower cost of living and lower wages to go with it, so seeing my Silicon Valley brethren complaining about the price of paying for non-free email on your own domain is really awkward, given the importance of email. I get it, I hate subscriptions for software too. But not when that service is essential for your profession, your security or your privacy and email is all of the above.
- Freak_NL 8y ago
  > That's less than the price of a Starbucks Grande Latte. A cup of coffee is a pretty lousy indication of cost. For some people going into a Starbucks for a $5/€4,40/£3,92 gluten-free-unicorn-sprinkles-ariana-grande-latte may be part of a daily routine, but for others, coffee means using a coffee-maker to brew your own cup for a few cents, or just getting a cup to go at a some kiosk.
  - bad_user 8y ago
    My point is that many of us drink such beverages every couple of days at least and in order to pay for your email address basically implies the same effort as buying a Starbucks Grande Latte. And your email address is your online identity and has plenty of information in it that shouldn't leak, including your entire online purchasing history at least. I am against paying for crap via subscriptions, I hate the subscriptions trend myself, but email in my opinion is fundamental to who we are and what we do online.
  - kup0 8y ago
    I think that's a pedantic detail that actually ignores the point being made. I've seen the "cheaper the the cost of a coffee per month!" type of phrasing used to commonly refer to Starbucks/etc I almost never buy coffee out anywhere like Starbucks, but it was easy for me to understand in the context of his post
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
morganvachon 8y ago
You can run your own email server via Vultr or DO for $5/month or less. You have to do some work to maintain it so there's the cost of time invested, so maybe two coffees/month. You can also opt for Fastmail or ProtonMail, or similar privacy-respecting email services, and again you're getting it for less than $5/month. I use Fastmail for my main email account and I love it. I use Tiger Technologies (https://tigertech.net https://tigertech.net) for hosting mine and my wife's personal sites and email, they are all I need for basic Wordpress/email hosting and they have a superb support team. If I decide I want to get my hands dirty with running a server, I use Vultr.
ilikehurdles 8y ago
G Suite for a domain and email is $5-6/mo. A cappuccino in SF I guess is a better analogy.
- bad_user 8y ago
  If you go for the annual plan it's $4.16. Also the much better deal is the business edition, at $10 per month, which also gives you unlimited GDrive storage. Couple that with something like ArqBackup, Rclone, etc and it gets to be very cost effective, being cheaper than a Dropbox subscription. Also the Terms of Service for G Suite is meant for businesses and thus much better. Just be careful when buying apps and books from Google Play. If you don't want to be locked-in, don't purchase anything that can't be migrated.

moccachino 8y ago

To be fair it does take much more than $20 worth of effort to migrate all your stuff from gmail. How much more I don't know since I've yet to do it, even though I've been paying for another email service for more than a year.

mstade 8y ago
Man, I pay $50/year for my Fastmail account. I use a custom domain, so total cost is a bit higher, probably something like $60-$70/year, not sure. Moving from gmail to fastmail, given their integrated migration process, was a complete breeze. I still have gmail forwarding set up to my new email address, but I haven't logged into the account for well over two years at this point. This reminds me to actually check how many emails I received over the past year that came via gmail. Off the top of my head I can only recall a single one, at least from a person I know and wanted to receive email from. I swiftly replied with my new address of course. I'm going to stop forwarding now, and set up an auto-reply to give people a new address. Not my personal one, but an alias I'll set up in a minute, so that I can shut that down eventually too. Probably useless paranoia, but it floats my boat. I don't regret the move one bit, and the whole process of setting up my account and moving all ten or so years worth of email from gmail to Fastmail was over and done within a week. Fastmail does what it says on the tin – it's very fast. It also pretty much never fails. In the past two or so years that I've had my account I have only experienced downtime once, for a few minutes. I made myself some coffee and then service was back again. I am not affiliated with Fastmail in any way, shape or form – just a very happy customer.
- kakarot 8y ago
  How is hosting your data with Fastmail and allowing them to sniff your traffic better than hosting with Google? Out of the frying pan and into the fire, if you ask me.
  - mstade 8y ago
    Sure, but that's a different discussion altogether. The post I replied to was implying the effort is greater and more complex than most think, and I'm saying it probably isn't – at least not for the common cases. Privacy is a very real concern, but a different conversation.

bayindirh 8y ago

The problem with GMail is, it's too convenient to use, and relatively secure because of 2FA support. Also, people (including me) think that some newsletters, some bills and receipts are not very personal, so people don't care. I have two main addresses, one is from a local provider and my all financial e-mails and other stuff is coming to that e-mail address, however they don't encrypt anything. I also just got a free Proton mail, and will upgrade the account when I'm a little better off. Paid e-mail addresses are not meaningless, but they're harder to justify in most people's eyes. BTW, I never store anything which makes me uncomfortable, anywhere incl. my brain. That's a much better way of living. Not that privacy conscious people is hiding something, but that's my policy.

bad_user 8y ago
G Suite from Google is still Gmail, but with a better terms of use and usage of your own domain and thus no lock-in. For people that like Gmail it’s a much better alternative. My point was that people aren’t willing to vote with their wallet, but being a loud mouth doesn’t cost anything. And that’s how we end up with monopolies. On the topic at hand I still remember the people crying against Firefox’s Pocket integration. Well, as Chrome crushes its competition, while becoming more invasive everyday, I hope they are happy with the outcome.
- cascom 8y ago
  I’ve been planning on ditching gmail for a while, but I can’t find a domain name for my perineal email (either taken or don’t love) that I want to use for the next 10+ years!!!
  - dubya 8y ago
    > my perineal email taint.net seems to be for sale.
    - cascom 8y ago
      LOL

internalfx 8y ago

I have run a Zimbra server for several years now, it's a full size enterprise grade email server. I can run it on a $10 droplet from Digital Ocean. $10 is kinda high just for my email, but the bonus is I host _all_ my family's mail. Wife, kids even mom and dad! It's been nice not being concerned about email privacy. Zimbra is a great piece of software. I think more people should look into it.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
I don't trust myself enough to run my own mail server; did you set up your own backups? What's the uptime / SLA (not that gmail has any but still)? Do you need to set up and manage security yourself?
- y4mi 8y ago
  i'm not the parent poster, but did host my mail own for a while. 99.99+ uptime for mail is generally not as important, as undelivered emails get resend if it wasn't up at the time of delivery. it might still be a problem, because its technically possible to disable that feature, but its generally done everywhere. the bigger problem is, iirc, that the biggest mail provider (gmail) pushes unknown mail servers to spam... so you'll probably be forced to use a relay. thats still not a big problem, because you generally get one from you domain registrar there are also fully functional mail implementations that you can use right away with minimal configuration such as MailInABox [0] ...still, i've switched to fastmail ~2 yrs ago and won't be going back to self hosted anytime soon, though i do own several servers i could use for that... [0] https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/
- blacksmith_tb 8y ago
  I am not running a mail server on DO, but I do have several other services on their VMs, and they will do automated backups for you for a few USD per month.
- internalfx 8y ago
  DO makes backups easy. It Rarely ever goes down (maybe twice in 4 years? I have to think really hard to remember an outage, it's just kinda always....there.) I periodically run: sudo apt update sudo apt full-upgrade Honestly it takes very little of my time, and Zimbra is a really awesome email system.

jimmy1 8y ago

> Also regardless of the topic, double standards are rampant in this community. Most of us speak out against against Google because we like most of Google and want to continue to use their services, just not to thrilled about some things and want them to shape up, not have them cease to exist completely. It's the difference between being reasoned or extreme.

tim333 8y ago

>double standards are rampant I'm not that bothered about the type of privacy Chrome invades. If someone put a camera in my bedroom I'm bothered but if Google knows I'm thinking of fixing my washing machine and tries to advertise to me it doesn't bother me. But say that and you get down voted etc by the "people screaming their lungs out about privacy" crowd. So us types kind of keep quiet.