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I abandoned my iphone4 for a nexus because I felt the walled garden approach Apple were taking was a stranglehold; there was no flexibility with the home screen

I abandoned my iphone4 for a nexus because I felt the walled garden approach Apple were taking was a stranglehold; there was no flexibility with the home screen, I couldn't run any emulators, blah blah. On my nexus I could have the hacker news feed on my home screen! Felt like a huge win for a few years. Now I'm 100% abandoning android to head back over to IOS, which has been reinforced by IOS14 detecting TikTok capturing huge amounts of data nefariously. BUT here's the added problem - I've had a google account for over 15 years, all of my email is handled via a (paid) google account and migrating it to something else is the kind of nightmare that I've been procrastinating over for a few years. I know I can control lots of privacy settings, but my overall trust is pretty thin these days. Add to that a lot of friends only use WhatsApp means that Facebook still have an 'in' as well... it feels like even with the best intentions the market still has an almost insurmountable leverage over the individual (in this case me!).

lostlogin 6y ago
Do you need to move your email? Can’t you just have that go to an iPhone?
reaperducer 6y ago
I've had a google account for over 15 years, all of my email is handled via a (paid) google account and migrating it to something else is the kind of nightmare that I've been procrastinating over for a few years I was in the same boat. I was paying Google over $30/month just for e-mail. I didn't move for years because I feared it would be a hassle. In the end, I was able to move everything over to Fastmail in half an afternoon. It really was worth it.
- penzizzle 6y ago
  Wow I just had a look at Fastmail and there's a quote on there directly targetting all of us that feel like this - "there's even a gmail transfer tool" :D Thanks so much for this, I'm looking into it now!
  - fossuser 6y ago
    I did the same thing a few weeks ago and it worked well, Fastmail's documentation was also really good. I'd recommend setting up your own domain for email with Fastmail too since it makes it easy to move later. Fastmail also lets you create aliases for individual accounts, I've used that to group together less trustworthy services. The biggest time sync was moving all existing accounts from Gmail over to Fastmail. Luckily I use a password manager so they were at least all in one place, but it still took about a day of tedious effort. What's worse is a lot of sites are just broken. They don't let you change your email or account name, they make you contact support to do it, etc. If you're in California you can at least file a CCPA request to force them to delete your account.
philliphaydon 6y ago
Ah I wish people would stop using WhatsApp. It's not secure by any means. I'm really sick of facebook advertising products based on conversations I have in WhatsApp.

lostlogin 6y ago

Do you need to move your email? Can’t you just have that go to an iPhone?

reaperducer 6y ago

I've had a google account for over 15 years, all of my email is handled via a (paid) google account and migrating it to something else is the kind of nightmare that I've been procrastinating over for a few years I was in the same boat. I was paying Google over $30/month just for e-mail. I didn't move for years because I feared it would be a hassle. In the end, I was able to move everything over to Fastmail in half an afternoon. It really was worth it.

penzizzle 6y ago
Wow I just had a look at Fastmail and there's a quote on there directly targetting all of us that feel like this - "there's even a gmail transfer tool" :D Thanks so much for this, I'm looking into it now!
- fossuser 6y ago
  I did the same thing a few weeks ago and it worked well, Fastmail's documentation was also really good. I'd recommend setting up your own domain for email with Fastmail too since it makes it easy to move later. Fastmail also lets you create aliases for individual accounts, I've used that to group together less trustworthy services. The biggest time sync was moving all existing accounts from Gmail over to Fastmail. Luckily I use a password manager so they were at least all in one place, but it still took about a day of tedious effort. What's worse is a lot of sites are just broken. They don't let you change your email or account name, they make you contact support to do it, etc. If you're in California you can at least file a CCPA request to force them to delete your account.

philliphaydon 6y ago

Ah I wish people would stop using WhatsApp. It's not secure by any means. I'm really sick of facebook advertising products based on conversations I have in WhatsApp.