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> IMAP and POP are just so inadequate that locking yourself into gmail/whatever is a reasonable choice. Totally agree that email protocols need improvement, bu

by kbd 8y ago

> IMAP and POP are just so inadequate that locking yourself into gmail/whatever is a reasonable choice. Totally agree that email protocols need improvement, but there are other benefits to gmail. I'm always going to want reliable service and storage, good spam filtering (and gmail's scale allows them to do that potentially better than anybody), and the interface is pretty good. I can even use my own domain.

tjoff 8y ago
Step 1 is a good backup. With JMAP that could be done for any provider, can you with gmail? The solutions that I've seen all seem like hacks. But I have yet to try it so I could be very wrong. But please let me know if there is a decent alternative, I'm about to migrate a google account. I'd hope most decent providers let you use your own domain... It's easy to think gmail spam filtering is good if you never check the spam folder. It has filtered out some very important mails for me and others so I do my very best to disable it. Create a filter for "is:spam" and "Never send it to Spam" is the best solution I know. But despite this google might remove mails anyway.
- kbd 8y ago
  The spam filtering isn't perfect (can't think of any false negatives, but some false positives. I hedged with "potentially" above) but I receive very little spam so I just check the folder when I get one. And this is with an old school catch-all domain setting too. I haven't looked into backing up gmail.
- jfb 8y ago
  I've had good success using mbsync to back up a variety of IMAP provided email services. It's not perfect, and does require a little bit of fiddling, but once it's set up, it Just Works™ the way it should. I've even used it to move ~300k mails from Google to Fastmail.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  I had a lot of custom spam rules on Gmail because Google takes the opinion of the masses to decide how to filter. Since FastMail's personalized spam filter kicked in, which is based on my opinion, I've never had to make hard rules for FastMail spam handling. Another big advantage is that their spam data aggregation is optional, unlike Gmail's, and solely uses the content of confirmed spam (aka, you permanently deleted it) to refine their data, so no personal data is getting hoovered up with it. I did actually shut off offering up my spam data to the masses on FastMail, because I realized I had an edge case where the filters defining my spam as spam for everyone could be harmful. As far as backup, I have a local Microsoft Outlook which I open every so often which pulls down all the email. I wouldn't mind a Google Takeout-esque download feature from FastMail at some point too though.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
From current experience, emails starting with - - in the subject line are still bypassing Gmail's spam filter entirely, months after the bug was reported. I rarely get spam at FastMail but it's classification rate has been near perfect. I don't doubt there was a time Gmail was the absolute best at spam filtering, but I would contend that time is over.
justusthane 8y ago
Fastmail does all of that with the addition of great customer support, and I trust them a hell of a lot more with my data and privacy than I do Google.

by kbd 8y ago

tjoff 8y ago

Step 1 is a good backup. With JMAP that could be done for any provider, can you with gmail? The solutions that I've seen all seem like hacks. But I have yet to try it so I could be very wrong. But please let me know if there is a decent alternative, I'm about to migrate a google account. I'd hope most decent providers let you use your own domain... It's easy to think gmail spam filtering is good if you never check the spam folder. It has filtered out some very important mails for me and others so I do my very best to disable it. Create a filter for "is:spam" and "Never send it to Spam" is the best solution I know. But despite this google might remove mails anyway.

kbd 8y ago
The spam filtering isn't perfect (can't think of any false negatives, but some false positives. I hedged with "potentially" above) but I receive very little spam so I just check the folder when I get one. And this is with an old school catch-all domain setting too. I haven't looked into backing up gmail.
jfb 8y ago
I've had good success using mbsync to back up a variety of IMAP provided email services. It's not perfect, and does require a little bit of fiddling, but once it's set up, it Just Works™ the way it should. I've even used it to move ~300k mails from Google to Fastmail.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
I had a lot of custom spam rules on Gmail because Google takes the opinion of the masses to decide how to filter. Since FastMail's personalized spam filter kicked in, which is based on my opinion, I've never had to make hard rules for FastMail spam handling. Another big advantage is that their spam data aggregation is optional, unlike Gmail's, and solely uses the content of confirmed spam (aka, you permanently deleted it) to refine their data, so no personal data is getting hoovered up with it. I did actually shut off offering up my spam data to the masses on FastMail, because I realized I had an edge case where the filters defining my spam as spam for everyone could be harmful. As far as backup, I have a local Microsoft Outlook which I open every so often which pulls down all the email. I wouldn't mind a Google Takeout-esque download feature from FastMail at some point too though.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

From current experience, emails starting with - - in the subject line are still bypassing Gmail's spam filter entirely, months after the bug was reported. I rarely get spam at FastMail but it's classification rate has been near perfect. I don't doubt there was a time Gmail was the absolute best at spam filtering, but I would contend that time is over.

justusthane 8y ago

Fastmail does all of that with the addition of great customer support, and I trust them a hell of a lot more with my data and privacy than I do Google.