7 ms·

Stories like this make me incredibly wary about the future of my Google account. I've been using it for almost twelve years. It has a copy of every photo/video

Stories like this make me incredibly wary about the future of my Google account. I've been using it for almost twelve years. It has a copy of every photo/video I've taken for almost eight years. It's what I use to download apps, listen to music, and pay for things, and get around. I'd be absolutely devastated if I suddenly lost it. I've been planning for a while now a sort of contingency plan where I regularly backup my emails and photos, but from what I've read even that's difficult to do.

ndnxhs 8y ago
Its not particularly hard to back up your google data. The hard part is switching emails when the old one gets suddenly taken from you.
- 2Ccltvcm 8y ago
  Get your own domain and start using it for email. Auto-forward your existing emails to your new email provider. Over time your use of your primary email will asymptotically reach zero. After a few years you will realize that if the original email disappeared overnight, nothing of value would be lost. You have to start the switch TODAY.
  - ndnxhs 8y ago
    Yeah thats what I have done and its not too bad. The one question I have is what email to I put for my domain stuff. If my domain name provider suspends my domain for some reason how do I contact them if my email has also gone down?
    - cesnja 8y ago
      A phone. Or some other email along with providing a way of identifying yourself.
davchana 8y ago
The easiest way to mirror gmail, i have heard & am using is, to set a filter in gmail, forward every mail received to Hotmail. So, any point, Hotmail inbox is a pretty segregated but exact copy of Gmail
- clairity 8y ago
  so you give two privacy ignoring companies all of your email (as well as portions of your email correspondents) instead of one? is control and some measure of privacy not worth the $50 or whatever to set up a paid account somewhere like https://www.protonmail.com/ https://www.protonmail.com/ ?
  - davchana 8y ago
    Your sarcastic comment is totally unwanted. Nowhere I talked about Privacy, just that its very unlikely of a user to get locked out of accessing all old emails at two major provides at same time. The thread itself is about Google, and the comment I replied to is worried about getting locked out of Emails at Google. What are protonmail policies for unwanted user? Lockout? Backup? $50 for you might be a whatever amount, but in few places it is a lot, and not desirable or able to spend this much on email. By any chance do you work or connected with protonmail? I am connected with neither of all three, but have accounts at all three, just like anybody else.
  - a11595 8y ago
    average salary in Kiev - $300/month. Sick gramma on food stamps. Guy bankrupt from cancer. Billions of poor indian and chinese (usa population is 350mil). 15yo student on $20/week allowance. Africa. So if we round up to most of the world, "is privacy worth a week's to a month's income?" The answer to your question is no. Privacy of their useless emails is not, and nether is mine, upper 5% of USA. but I run my own domain and email service, for $20/year, not use google.
pascalxus 8y ago
Yes, and you can't trust yahoo mail either. I lost mine about 8 years ago for completely unknown reasons. they just randomly shut it down one day. I was completely appalled and vowed to never ever use another yahoo product as long as i live. I wonder how many other people had a similar experience.
8ytecoder 8y ago
Every time a comment like this comes up I say the same thing: Your email address is very very valuable and everything in the digital world is tied to it one way or the other. Own the domain so you can port it to another provider. Keep a copy of your emails somewhere - a mail app on your laptop? If you use drive, sync it fully to a laptop. It's not just Google, any service - paid or free, can and will shutdown your account. It's something you have to assume will happen to you - not just some random stranger on the internet. I don't know about you but I definitely don't want to deal with losing all my digital documents, pictures and most important all my accounts by losing my email address. No one should be complacent about this.
- EduardoBautista 8y ago
  You know, I currently use my own domain for email. Maybe I am paranoid, but I worry about that when I die, my domain will expire, and then someone will register that domain and set up email accounts with it. They would be able to access so many services that I would have left open after my death. I still don't know how to handle this apart from leaving a fund to someone I trust to have my domain renewed for a few more decades after my death.
  - dstaley 8y ago
    You don't even need to die for this to be an issue. Your registrar could just screw up and sell your domain to someone else. Or your registrar could have a security breach resulting in your domain being transferred. There's a myriad of ways the "own your domain" solution could fail, so it's really about which risks you're willing to take.
    - EduardoBautista 8y ago
      Yes, I have thought about this as well. One of the reasons I am in the process of moving all of my domains to Gandi is because they appear to be the only reputable domain registrar that supports U2F. I take security extremely seriously when it comes to my domains.
2Ccltvcm 8y ago
Do you want to keep your photos and videos forever? You have to take your data in your own hands. At the very minimum keep an offline backup of things you care about.
lvs 8y ago
I agree -- this single point of failure is incredibly scary. There must be a legal mechanism established to ensure consumers are protected. This is an inevitable technological cycle within markets: 1) a technology arises 2) usage spreads across consumers 3) consumers become deeply reliant on it 4) megacorps coalesce dominating market power over it 5) consumers demand protections from the government We have to get to step 5.
- mdpopescu 8y ago
  I would love to get protection from the government. What company does that? /s
  - akimball 8y ago
    Academi.com will do it, if you are the high bidder.
dddddaviddddd 8y ago
I use a simple getmail[0] script to download all my Gmail automatically, and I use an address on my own domain too. For Google Photos however I haven't found a great backup solution, especially one that can work on Linux/FreeBSD. [0] http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/ http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/
- benwaffle 8y ago
  I found this recently https://github.com/mholt/photobak https://github.com/mholt/photobak
  - dstaley 8y ago
    Photobak is really close, but Google's API apparently has several issues making it not a true solution. IIRC you can't download the original uploaded bytes, and you can't get the original EXIF data.

ndnxhs 8y ago

Its not particularly hard to back up your google data. The hard part is switching emails when the old one gets suddenly taken from you.

2Ccltvcm 8y ago
Get your own domain and start using it for email. Auto-forward your existing emails to your new email provider. Over time your use of your primary email will asymptotically reach zero. After a few years you will realize that if the original email disappeared overnight, nothing of value would be lost. You have to start the switch TODAY.
- ndnxhs 8y ago
  Yeah thats what I have done and its not too bad. The one question I have is what email to I put for my domain stuff. If my domain name provider suspends my domain for some reason how do I contact them if my email has also gone down?
  - cesnja 8y ago
    A phone. Or some other email along with providing a way of identifying yourself.

davchana 8y ago

The easiest way to mirror gmail, i have heard & am using is, to set a filter in gmail, forward every mail received to Hotmail. So, any point, Hotmail inbox is a pretty segregated but exact copy of Gmail

clairity 8y ago
so you give two privacy ignoring companies all of your email (as well as portions of your email correspondents) instead of one? is control and some measure of privacy not worth the $50 or whatever to set up a paid account somewhere like https://www.protonmail.com/ https://www.protonmail.com/ ?
- davchana 8y ago
  Your sarcastic comment is totally unwanted. Nowhere I talked about Privacy, just that its very unlikely of a user to get locked out of accessing all old emails at two major provides at same time. The thread itself is about Google, and the comment I replied to is worried about getting locked out of Emails at Google. What are protonmail policies for unwanted user? Lockout? Backup? $50 for you might be a whatever amount, but in few places it is a lot, and not desirable or able to spend this much on email. By any chance do you work or connected with protonmail? I am connected with neither of all three, but have accounts at all three, just like anybody else.
- a11595 8y ago
  average salary in Kiev - $300/month. Sick gramma on food stamps. Guy bankrupt from cancer. Billions of poor indian and chinese (usa population is 350mil). 15yo student on $20/week allowance. Africa. So if we round up to most of the world, "is privacy worth a week's to a month's income?" The answer to your question is no. Privacy of their useless emails is not, and nether is mine, upper 5% of USA. but I run my own domain and email service, for $20/year, not use google.

pascalxus 8y ago

Yes, and you can't trust yahoo mail either. I lost mine about 8 years ago for completely unknown reasons. they just randomly shut it down one day. I was completely appalled and vowed to never ever use another yahoo product as long as i live. I wonder how many other people had a similar experience.

8ytecoder 8y ago

Every time a comment like this comes up I say the same thing: Your email address is very very valuable and everything in the digital world is tied to it one way or the other. Own the domain so you can port it to another provider. Keep a copy of your emails somewhere - a mail app on your laptop? If you use drive, sync it fully to a laptop. It's not just Google, any service - paid or free, can and will shutdown your account. It's something you have to assume will happen to you - not just some random stranger on the internet. I don't know about you but I definitely don't want to deal with losing all my digital documents, pictures and most important all my accounts by losing my email address. No one should be complacent about this.

EduardoBautista 8y ago
You know, I currently use my own domain for email. Maybe I am paranoid, but I worry about that when I die, my domain will expire, and then someone will register that domain and set up email accounts with it. They would be able to access so many services that I would have left open after my death. I still don't know how to handle this apart from leaving a fund to someone I trust to have my domain renewed for a few more decades after my death.
- dstaley 8y ago
  You don't even need to die for this to be an issue. Your registrar could just screw up and sell your domain to someone else. Or your registrar could have a security breach resulting in your domain being transferred. There's a myriad of ways the "own your domain" solution could fail, so it's really about which risks you're willing to take.
  - EduardoBautista 8y ago
    Yes, I have thought about this as well. One of the reasons I am in the process of moving all of my domains to Gandi is because they appear to be the only reputable domain registrar that supports U2F. I take security extremely seriously when it comes to my domains.

2Ccltvcm 8y ago

Do you want to keep your photos and videos forever? You have to take your data in your own hands. At the very minimum keep an offline backup of things you care about.

lvs 8y ago

I agree -- this single point of failure is incredibly scary. There must be a legal mechanism established to ensure consumers are protected. This is an inevitable technological cycle within markets: 1) a technology arises 2) usage spreads across consumers 3) consumers become deeply reliant on it 4) megacorps coalesce dominating market power over it 5) consumers demand protections from the government We have to get to step 5.

mdpopescu 8y ago
I would love to get protection from the government. What company does that? /s
- akimball 8y ago
  Academi.com will do it, if you are the high bidder.

dddddaviddddd 8y ago

I use a simple getmail[0] script to download all my Gmail automatically, and I use an address on my own domain too. For Google Photos however I haven't found a great backup solution, especially one that can work on Linux/FreeBSD. [0] http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/ http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/

benwaffle 8y ago
I found this recently https://github.com/mholt/photobak https://github.com/mholt/photobak
- dstaley 8y ago
  Photobak is really close, but Google's API apparently has several issues making it not a true solution. IIRC you can't download the original uploaded bytes, and you can't get the original EXIF data.