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Your email address is too important to leave in the hands of a third-party provider. This isn’t to say that using a third-party provider to run your email is a

by dltj 5y ago

Your email address is too important to leave in the hands of a third-party provider. This isn’t to say that using a third-party provider to run your email is a bad idea. You should own the domain, though.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
Perhaps it’s time for the development of a standard where your email address isn’t tied to a domain; instead, email is addressed to an identity and the underlying plumbing automatically handles routing and delivery. Very similar to how your mobile phone number is portable between providers. We can’t expect everyone to own a domain to control their messaging sovereignty.
- umanwizard 5y ago
  What should it be tied to? Who would maintain the mapping of names to addresses, and wouldn’t this just be reinventing the domain name system?
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    DNS is for service discovery, not identity discovery and routing. I leave the rest of your questions for the standard to be developed. I don’t have all the answers, but am willing to pay people smarter than me to figure it out. Accept this sub thread as the official Request For Comments :)
  - vbezhenar 5y ago
    You own private key. Public key is your identity. Public key could be linked to facebook, twitter, github accounts, etc, so you can easily discover or verify people.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      Yeah! Keybase + FastMail’s open JMAP standard is the model I think you’d build on.
- flurdy 5y ago
  Wasn't that the idea behind .name TLD initially? Until they sold out and became yet another ccTld
  - johnvaluk 5y ago
    Wouldn't that approach also be doomed to failure? How would you provide a unique domain to every John Smith in the world?
- thombles 5y ago
  Sounds a lot like the nomadic identities in Hubzilla and the Zot protocol. https://zotlabs.org/page/hubzilla/hubzilla-project https://zotlabs.org/page/hubzilla/hubzilla-project https://zotlabs.org/help/en/developer/zot_protocol#What_is_Zot_ https://zotlabs.org/help/en/developer/zot_protocol#What_is_Z...
hyakosm 5y ago
Yes. I also made the choice to pay for my email hosting from a reliable provider, it's cheap (1.5$ month) and I'm considered as a customer, I can have a support with real humans.
- adenner 5y ago
  Care to share which company?
  - toss1 5y ago
    I use KolabNow, can strongly recommend them for reliability, security, support.
guitarbill 5y ago
True, but an added complication is that you have to be really, really careful about your domain. You have to trust your registrar, set up 2FA, and make sure it never expires, etc. So in the end, owning your domain isn't foolproof either, it's also another point of failure (similar to Google deleting your account, although one you may have more control over). For what it's worth, I use Fastmail + a custom domain and couldn't be happier. But I'd hardly recommend it to everyone for personal email.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  As someone considering either Fastmail or Protonmail, could you share what your experience is like and why you chose Fastmail?
  - hosteur 5y ago
    I recently did a big survey of the mail hosting market. I settled on migadu. Have used them for two months now and am very happy with them. Consider checking them out.
  - ProAm 5y ago
    You have real customer support (a person) who gets back to you in a timely fashion and is always helpful. The android app and web app are intuitive and easy to use. I switched from Gmail to Fastmail a few years ago and couldnt be happier and it's cheap.
  - joshe 5y ago
    15 year Fastmail user here. Fastmail has been great, no downtime, and I don't really think about it at all. Good web client and you can do filtering if you need to.
  - Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 5y ago
    Same setup as the comment you're answering to. They've just been super reliable and mature for me. No huge updates that force me to adjust. Interface is nice and clean, uptime and service super reliable. Everything just seems to work for me (aliases, forwarding, filters, good Android app), and the pricing is within reason. I actually use their web interface and official Android app. I'm surely no power user, but have used various providers over the years until I settled with Fastmail (seemingly for good). It's difficult to decide whom to trust with e-mail but to me they seem trustworthy. I still like to have my own domain, so I could in theory take it with me, if I ever started being displeased. In general: Paying for a service (especially e-mail) is invaluable (my data not being mined), also for potential account recovery (didn't use their customer service often, but when it happened, it was decent). I can't comment on ProtonMail but especially with e-mail, a proven (long term) track record is gold, and Fastmail has it. addendum: upon rereading it almost sounds like a Fastmail commercial. I'm only a satisfied user without any further connection towards the company.
Aardwolf 5y ago
Don't you also depend on a third-party for your domain, though?
- kroltan 5y ago
  Yes, but if one goes out of business you can buy your domain from someone else! Or even transfer it, if you are warned a nonzero amount of time in advance. Being able to keep your address across service providers being the important part here, that way your online life doesn't get in a huge jumble when your provider goes away.
  - johnvaluk 5y ago
    I've hosted email for myself and some other users for decades now. We all own our domains and aren't getting any younger. I'm a little terrified of the responsibility I've taken on and have no idea what I'll do when we start dropping like flies. Renewals will lapse, allowing squatters to snatch up our domains, read new incoming email and impersonate us. I'm not thrilled with depending on third parties, either, but now I wish it was someone else's problem who might outlive us and exercise a small degree of ethical oversight. Maybe there's a business idea here...
    - kroltan 5y ago
      That's fair enough, as long as you would trust that business to not misuse your address space for other things. Same level of trust one would put in a regular email provider, I guess.
AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
And yet you literally can't run your own mail server in most situations. ISPs will block you. What's the solution?
- Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 5y ago
  Running your own mail server, having problems due to shared IP is only one of the problems. Some more: Spam filtering for one. Uptime and updating without downtime. You would absolutely need redundancy (complexity of the solution required starts building up quickly). Keeping tabs on mail server security and the vulnerabilities discovered in your particular software stack. A 15 second down time means an important mail might not reach you. If your mail server crashes due to unknown reason at 4 am, do you really want it to be your problem to fix? And it will of course happen when it least fits your schedule for the day. On most days I could live with my website being offline for a few hours because I've screwed up, but with E-Mail? The solution? The more you think it through, own the domain, yes, but use a mature and reliable (and paid for) provider you trust to do the hosting for you. For someone technical enough to securely own a domain and not let it expire that seems like the best solution really, unless maybe you own your own hosting service? :P (but then, technically, I guess it's not your own private mail server either)
  - dmm 5y ago
    > A 15 second down time means an important mail might not reach you Email servers will retry sending messages and won't expire them unless the retries fail for several days. So even a day of downtime shouldn't result in losing email.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
pan69 5y ago
This is exactly the reason I'm using Fastmail. I can BYO my own domain.

by dltj 5y ago

toomuchtodo 5y ago

Perhaps it’s time for the development of a standard where your email address isn’t tied to a domain; instead, email is addressed to an identity and the underlying plumbing automatically handles routing and delivery. Very similar to how your mobile phone number is portable between providers. We can’t expect everyone to own a domain to control their messaging sovereignty.

umanwizard 5y ago
What should it be tied to? Who would maintain the mapping of names to addresses, and wouldn’t this just be reinventing the domain name system?
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  DNS is for service discovery, not identity discovery and routing. I leave the rest of your questions for the standard to be developed. I don’t have all the answers, but am willing to pay people smarter than me to figure it out. Accept this sub thread as the official Request For Comments :)
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  You own private key. Public key is your identity. Public key could be linked to facebook, twitter, github accounts, etc, so you can easily discover or verify people.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Yeah! Keybase + FastMail’s open JMAP standard is the model I think you’d build on.
flurdy 5y ago
Wasn't that the idea behind .name TLD initially? Until they sold out and became yet another ccTld
- johnvaluk 5y ago
  Wouldn't that approach also be doomed to failure? How would you provide a unique domain to every John Smith in the world?
thombles 5y ago
Sounds a lot like the nomadic identities in Hubzilla and the Zot protocol. https://zotlabs.org/page/hubzilla/hubzilla-project https://zotlabs.org/page/hubzilla/hubzilla-project https://zotlabs.org/help/en/developer/zot_protocol#What_is_Zot_ https://zotlabs.org/help/en/developer/zot_protocol#What_is_Z...

hyakosm 5y ago

Yes. I also made the choice to pay for my email hosting from a reliable provider, it's cheap (1.5$ month) and I'm considered as a customer, I can have a support with real humans.

adenner 5y ago
Care to share which company?
- toss1 5y ago
  I use KolabNow, can strongly recommend them for reliability, security, support.

guitarbill 5y ago

True, but an added complication is that you have to be really, really careful about your domain. You have to trust your registrar, set up 2FA, and make sure it never expires, etc. So in the end, owning your domain isn't foolproof either, it's also another point of failure (similar to Google deleting your account, although one you may have more control over). For what it's worth, I use Fastmail + a custom domain and couldn't be happier. But I'd hardly recommend it to everyone for personal email.

throwawaysea 5y ago
As someone considering either Fastmail or Protonmail, could you share what your experience is like and why you chose Fastmail?
- hosteur 5y ago
  I recently did a big survey of the mail hosting market. I settled on migadu. Have used them for two months now and am very happy with them. Consider checking them out.
- ProAm 5y ago
  You have real customer support (a person) who gets back to you in a timely fashion and is always helpful. The android app and web app are intuitive and easy to use. I switched from Gmail to Fastmail a few years ago and couldnt be happier and it's cheap.
- joshe 5y ago
  15 year Fastmail user here. Fastmail has been great, no downtime, and I don't really think about it at all. Good web client and you can do filtering if you need to.
- Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 5y ago
  Same setup as the comment you're answering to. They've just been super reliable and mature for me. No huge updates that force me to adjust. Interface is nice and clean, uptime and service super reliable. Everything just seems to work for me (aliases, forwarding, filters, good Android app), and the pricing is within reason. I actually use their web interface and official Android app. I'm surely no power user, but have used various providers over the years until I settled with Fastmail (seemingly for good). It's difficult to decide whom to trust with e-mail but to me they seem trustworthy. I still like to have my own domain, so I could in theory take it with me, if I ever started being displeased. In general: Paying for a service (especially e-mail) is invaluable (my data not being mined), also for potential account recovery (didn't use their customer service often, but when it happened, it was decent). I can't comment on ProtonMail but especially with e-mail, a proven (long term) track record is gold, and Fastmail has it. addendum: upon rereading it almost sounds like a Fastmail commercial. I'm only a satisfied user without any further connection towards the company.

Aardwolf 5y ago

Don't you also depend on a third-party for your domain, though?

kroltan 5y ago
Yes, but if one goes out of business you can buy your domain from someone else! Or even transfer it, if you are warned a nonzero amount of time in advance. Being able to keep your address across service providers being the important part here, that way your online life doesn't get in a huge jumble when your provider goes away.
- johnvaluk 5y ago
  I've hosted email for myself and some other users for decades now. We all own our domains and aren't getting any younger. I'm a little terrified of the responsibility I've taken on and have no idea what I'll do when we start dropping like flies. Renewals will lapse, allowing squatters to snatch up our domains, read new incoming email and impersonate us. I'm not thrilled with depending on third parties, either, but now I wish it was someone else's problem who might outlive us and exercise a small degree of ethical oversight. Maybe there's a business idea here...
  - kroltan 5y ago
    That's fair enough, as long as you would trust that business to not misuse your address space for other things. Same level of trust one would put in a regular email provider, I guess.

AdmiralAsshat 5y ago

And yet you literally can't run your own mail server in most situations. ISPs will block you. What's the solution?

Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 5y ago
Running your own mail server, having problems due to shared IP is only one of the problems. Some more: Spam filtering for one. Uptime and updating without downtime. You would absolutely need redundancy (complexity of the solution required starts building up quickly). Keeping tabs on mail server security and the vulnerabilities discovered in your particular software stack. A 15 second down time means an important mail might not reach you. If your mail server crashes due to unknown reason at 4 am, do you really want it to be your problem to fix? And it will of course happen when it least fits your schedule for the day. On most days I could live with my website being offline for a few hours because I've screwed up, but with E-Mail? The solution? The more you think it through, own the domain, yes, but use a mature and reliable (and paid for) provider you trust to do the hosting for you. For someone technical enough to securely own a domain and not let it expire that seems like the best solution really, unless maybe you own your own hosting service? :P (but then, technically, I guess it's not your own private mail server either)
- dmm 5y ago
  > A 15 second down time means an important mail might not reach you Email servers will retry sending messages and won't expire them unless the retries fail for several days. So even a day of downtime shouldn't result in losing email.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

pan69 5y ago

This is exactly the reason I'm using Fastmail. I can BYO my own domain.