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I'd love to change, but I'm signed up everywhere with my gmail account. I feel kidnapped at this point. And it is not as easy as just changing my login email e

by midrus 5y ago

I'd love to change, but I'm signed up everywhere with my gmail account. I feel kidnapped at this point. And it is not as easy as just changing my login email everywhere. 1. Some system (such as government ones) make it very, very difficult to change, not even possible on some 2. How do I make sure I'm not forgetting some random site I don't frequently use 3. What about everyone's contacts where they have me saved with my @gmail account, I can't update their addressbooks At this point I think the only think I do is pray for my gmail account not being blocked.

_frkl 5y ago
When I moved, I did it gradually, over a year or two. No reason to do it in a day. Send out an email to everyone in your address book, migrate over the most important and easiest services first, and then others whenever you use them and think of it. Then, at some stage, only unimportant stuff will trickle in, and you will check that account less and less. Maybe setup an autoreply to point to your new address, and auto forwarding. There will be some holdouts, and some you forget. But, arguably, if you didn't use a service in the last two years, the inconvenience caused by your google account being cancelled will be limited. It all still be annoying to loose your android apps and music and whatnot, but not your whole life.
kdtsh 5y ago
It took about a year for me to fully switch. Even now, I haven’t deleted my Gmail address - I just forward everything to my new address at my domain, and whenever anything appears in my Gmail address which I would like to switch over I make it happen. I even recently did the switch from one mail provider to another while keeping my email address, since I took the advice of people years ago to choose a provider who supports custom domains and use them. Although I spent a fair bit of time researching, the process itself took about 2-3 hours. When people say it’s easy to switch between providers when you own the domain, they mean it. It’s not an easy task at all, but you don’t have to do it in one hit. Just take your time - in the meantime you hope that your Google account doesn’t get axed, but even if it does you’re in a better position than if you stayed. On forgetting a random site: use a password manager; then, you have an effective memory of all the services you use as well as their logins. This is something you should do whether you use Gmail or not. (This might be a bit redundant if you use Google to log in everywhere at the moment, but you’ll thank yourself later if you start this now.)

by midrus 5y ago

_frkl 5y ago

When I moved, I did it gradually, over a year or two. No reason to do it in a day. Send out an email to everyone in your address book, migrate over the most important and easiest services first, and then others whenever you use them and think of it. Then, at some stage, only unimportant stuff will trickle in, and you will check that account less and less. Maybe setup an autoreply to point to your new address, and auto forwarding. There will be some holdouts, and some you forget. But, arguably, if you didn't use a service in the last two years, the inconvenience caused by your google account being cancelled will be limited. It all still be annoying to loose your android apps and music and whatnot, but not your whole life.

kdtsh 5y ago

It took about a year for me to fully switch. Even now, I haven’t deleted my Gmail address - I just forward everything to my new address at my domain, and whenever anything appears in my Gmail address which I would like to switch over I make it happen. I even recently did the switch from one mail provider to another while keeping my email address, since I took the advice of people years ago to choose a provider who supports custom domains and use them. Although I spent a fair bit of time researching, the process itself took about 2-3 hours. When people say it’s easy to switch between providers when you own the domain, they mean it. It’s not an easy task at all, but you don’t have to do it in one hit. Just take your time - in the meantime you hope that your Google account doesn’t get axed, but even if it does you’re in a better position than if you stayed. On forgetting a random site: use a password manager; then, you have an effective memory of all the services you use as well as their logins. This is something you should do whether you use Gmail or not. (This might be a bit redundant if you use Google to log in everywhere at the moment, but you’ll thank yourself later if you start this now.)