27 ms·

Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

453 points by pabs3 4y ago

MrPatan 4y ago
Unencrypted email is not private, never has been, never will be. The real problem is handing over your digital identity to Google, not the content of emails.
- Tepix 4y ago
  Nowdays, even unencrypted email can be private, thanks to opportunistic encryption. Not when you're using Gmail of course.
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    Opportunistic encryption only encrypts mail transport between mail servers. Both the sending and receiving servers can read the plaintext.
    - Tepix 4y ago
      As long as both parties run their own mailservers, it's cool!
- brnt 4y ago
  What I dislike is that email addresses have become the primary key of online identity. Many services don't even have usernames anymore. I still think that government should furnish something like an online postal address. Protected with gov issued hardware keys (U2F?), white listing for recipients maybe. To be used only for gov business, banking, gas, water, etc. If those things are essential to life, and in turn depend heavily on email (here they do for sure), they should not be handled by fickle Big Tech.
MaxBarraclough 4y ago
Eben Moglen, law professor and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center, gave a talk on privacy that discussed exactly this. I believe it was in 2011. I would urge you also to consider that privacy is an ecological rather than a transactional substance. This is a crucial distinction from what you are taught to believe by the people whose job it is to earn off you. Those who wish to earn off you want to define privacy as a thing you transact about with them, just the two of you. They offer you free email service, in response to which you let them read all the mail, and that’s that. It’s just a transaction between two parties. They offer you free web hosting for your social communications, in return for watching everybody look at everything. They assert that’s a transaction in which only the parties themselves are engaged. This is a convenient fraudulence. Another misdirection, misleading, and plain lying proposition. Because - as I suggested in the analytic definition of the components of privacy - privacy is always a relation among people. It is not transactional, an agreement between a listener or a spy or a peephole keeper and the person being spied on. If you accept this supposedly bilateral offer, to provide email service for you for free as long as it can all be read, then everybody who corresponds with you has been subjected to the bargain, which was supposedly bilateral in nature. (Full transcript available at [0], video at [1].) Interestingly I see I'm not the first to quote this at length on HackerNews [2]. [0] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qfloojVeUQ0J:www.snowdenandthefuture.info/PartIII.html https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qflooj... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRs8ZPbHtos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRs8ZPbHtos [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747916 (Link-rot has eaten the original [0] URL, and archive.org is seemingly down, but I realise the irony in linking to Google's cached page, as well as their copy of the video.)
juunpp 4y ago
I have actually been receiving much spam from gmail addresses lately and have considered banning the domain altogether. > I was surprised to find out that my friend Peter Eckersley — a very privacy conscious person who is Technology Projects Director at the EFF — used Gmail I find that the EFF does this more often than not, like how they also criticize Amazon for giving police warrant-less access to Ring cameras... and then stream their online gatherings live on Twitch. I find their messaging sometimes does not tie well with their actions.
- fastball 4y ago
  That last point doesn't sound very hypocritical to me. There is a difference between a feed that is meant to be public and one that is not.
- javajosh 4y ago
  >police warrant-less access to Ring cameras... and then stream their online gatherings live on Twitch Streaming a public event on twitch vs on-demand warrentless police access to on-prem cameras? Am I missing something or are these two things not just not in the neighborhood, they are on different planets.
  - jjulius 4y ago
    >Am I missing something or are these two things not just not in the neighborhood, they are on different planets. Amazon owns Twitch. I think OP is highlighting that the EFF speaks out against Amazon's privacy practices while simultaneously supporting Amazon financially. Edit: "I think..."
    - eropple 4y ago
      Are you offering to pay for them to host their own streaming solution and volunteering to handle technical support for users who have trouble with it? This gotcha-game is tiring. People don't have to like Amazon to realize that they and YouTube are the only practical game in town for free live streaming.
duxup 4y ago
I remember when I was horrified that apps would ask for (or not…) all my contacts. But then I realized most people on my contacts probably wouldn’t say no so someone could easily use that information to guesstimate my contacts by using everyone else’s contacts.
- taneq 4y ago
  Did that realisation make you less horrified?
  - toxicFork 4y ago
    > To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror, to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror. Frank Herbert /s/mortality/your information is all over the internet/
Samon 4y ago
For me, owning my own email domain is far more about control than privacy. I currently use some MX and SMTP trickery to forward all of my email to Gmail, effectively using Gmail as my 'email client' - but because the domain is mine, I can change that without too much headache, unlike if I were just using an @gmail.com address.
- jwalton 4y ago
  How do your have your outgoing mail configured? Up until recently Gmail would let you send email from another domain, but they seem to have shut this down.
  - Tagbert 4y ago
    I have my domain hosted on a service that provides web hosting and email. I configured Gmail to pickup that email and merge with my gmail mails. I can choose to send as either my gmail address or my personal domain address. I just tried it now and it worked just fine.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Also about cost? You could use proton, but gmail is free I guess.
- defaultcompany 4y ago
  You don’t own a domain name you rent it. If you ever forget to renew it or you are unable to renew it for some reason then it becomes available for anyone else to register. At that point the new owner can receive all your email and potentially access any accounts which use that email as 2FA. I’m not saying you should never do this but it’s not a silver bullet.
  - jamiek88 4y ago
    yep cos of Covid namecheap sold my domain to a squatter who now wants $10k for something i've renewed for years for $12. That was so shitty coming back round to reality and everything broken. Still upset about it. To this day I have no idea why the card didn't pay as always.
ggm 4y ago
google/gmail is also one of the principal agents which declares by fiat "your own domain self-run mail is spam because I think its spam" which then propagates to other mail providers. SPF/DKIM no matter: if they decide it's spammy, un-doing this decision is appeal to a star chamber you cannot interact with directly.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  By what mechanism do you believe this information "propagates" to other mail operators?
  - ggm 4y ago
    Aside from the sharing of RBL lists, the reflexive bouncing of mails? SMTP error codes rejecting delivery transitively? Maybe I'm wrong and there is no information sharing here? Not impossible or implausible. Does Macys tell Gimbels? Another effect here is volume. That's non communicating between the big players but would inevitably lead to similar outcomes if they rank domains by volume/score weights. Hosting a small mail domain in Google is a good way not to get marked bad it seems. Postini filtering on your gsuite user side is an added bonus. I've yet to withdraw a domain from gsuite so I don't know how long it stays "acceptable" But I do know Gmail is one of the principal "not an acceptable sender" paths. As to how that flows or informs o365 or any other player, I may be making a bridge too far.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- imhoguy 4y ago
  > which then propagates to other mail providers Have you checked your mail server is configured properly and it doesn't act as open relay? > SPF/DKIM no matter SPF/DKIM is not enough, I needed DMARC and DNS PTR. You need static IP from some serious hosting, make sure IP is not black listed, dynamic home ISP addresses are out of question. Also register with Outlook SNDS https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/snds/ https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/snds/ , and Google FBL https://postmaster.google.com/ https://postmaster.google.com/ . It is a lot of hops but I have done it once a few years ago and now it all works fine for me, got 100% delivery for small traffic.
dang 4y ago
Related: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10229928 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10229928 - Sept 2015 (53 comments) Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7731022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7731022 - May 2014 (103 comments)
bagels 4y ago
Let's say theoretically I did a gdpr request to Google to delete my emails, do they have to delete the counterparty copy?
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  I doubt it. It is not reasonably “your data”. If I copy the email you sent me to dropbox would be the same sort of thing.
- MereInterest 4y ago
  From Article 4 of the GDPR: > ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person; As I (entirely non-lawyerly) interpret it, you could not do a GDPR request to delete the counterparty emails, because those are things written by you, not information about you. However, an email in which you state "I broke my leg today." would be personal data, because it can be connected to your identity and is information relating to you.
- webmobdev 4y ago
  I doubt it - when you send an email to someone, they also have the rights to store it in their inbox.
cglan 4y ago
Having your own email/domain isn’t about privacy. Email has become essentially the key to almost everything in modern life. If I lose access to my email I lose access to basically everything I own and it would be a massive hassle to switch emails. Banks, schools, apps, etc. Often times these services won’t even let you change to a new email if you don’t have access to an existing one. Some use email as 2factor. It’s a nightmare. Owning your own domain separately is crucial. Who hosts your email matters less.
- hilbert42 4y ago
  Heaven forbid, how did you become so utterly dependent on this technology? You're probably one of those who insists in using your phone instead of paying cash or using cards. You also probably use Twitter, Facebook and Google's Gmail too. If so, then you can't be helped. If you organize thing right you don't need to be so dependent on ephemeral technology (unless you're in Communist China, governments haven't made email compulsory yet. If they ever do then I'd demand free hardware to participate). BTW, I'm not an email Luddite, I have and have had email addresses since the late 1970s (in the days before the internet) using The Source etc. and after that I've run my own email servers and so on. Right, I was in the vanguard of the email service but I've never let it rule me or my life. P.S.: it really isn't that hard, for years I successfully ran a large IT department in a well-known organization and I refused to have an email address because I got damn sick of the CEO defaulting to email when all he had to do was to walk out of his office door and into mine—or use the good old POTS telephone! Yes, there are still many alternatives if you look (that is, unless you actually like being ruled over).
- YetAnotherNick 4y ago
  Is it known that domain registrars are better than GMail in this regard? Not asking sarcastically, but I had my domain taken over by registrar(not released to public, just registrar took control of it) after few week of notice when auto renew failed to charge my credit card, and my credit card was working fine elsewhere. Also many registrar like Namecheap cancelled subscription for Russian customers during this invasion. Not to mention incidents like [0] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32470266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32470266
quickthrower2 4y ago
A year after Snowden.
Barrin92 4y ago
">I have run my own email server which I use for all of my non-work correspondence. I do so to keep autonomy, control, and privacy over my email" if you want to retain control or privacy over correspondence, email is a horrible medium because by design anything can be forwarded, shared and copy&pasted trivially and this is done all the time. One guy is enough to leak an entire email chain. Good rule for email is, treat writing email as if you're speaking publicly.
- Timwi 4y ago
  What medium are you thinking of where messages can't be copy & pasted?
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  > Good rule for email is, treat writing email as if you're speaking publicly. ...and if you treat it that way, then it's not a "horrible medium" (for "publicly", I would prefer to substitute "on the record"). If you don't like email, that's cool; there are plenty of other messaging services you can use instead. But: - Your bank doesn't use them - Your friends don't use them - They are usually proprietary and opaque - You might lose your account, with no recourse Email is the universal baseline, the single communications channel that nearly everyone has access to.
  - TillE 4y ago
    > - Your friends don't use them Nobody under like 40 uses email for personal communication. Yeah it's a legacy medium for stuff like your bank, maybe it's the least terrible option for B2B communication, but email has largely been replaced already.
    - denton-scratch 4y ago
      It's the default: you need an email to make all those other accounts. Everyone has an email (assuming they have internet at all). Not everyone has a goofacetwat account, or whatever the newest thing is.
- 4y ago
SanjayMehta 4y ago
My main email is hosted on a local provider. All my junk mails are hosted by google.
gorgoiler 4y ago
Email is one technology with two quite different use cases: reply and noreply. The former is the sending and receiving of regular correspondence. The latter is the identity stuff and is the majority of my traffic: things like bills, receipts, tickets, reminders, security alerts, login confirmations, etc. In 2022 I’m more worried about an unregulated company monopolising the noreply part. It’s an enormous part of my life.
durnygbur 4y ago
Google has most of my contacts and personal info because it has all of yours.
Brajeshwar 4y ago
I think this is everywhere. In India, people in the departments, especially the Governments usually ask, "What is your Gmail?" Almost everyone uses Gmail here and it is extremely rare to find their own custom domain. I'm actually surprised that the Government Departments do not have a service that takes care of these! They will fine Google but almost all of the government email IDs are Gmail. I was one of those that distributed hundreds if not thousands of Gmail invites when it started. However, since 2010-ish, I left Gmail to be just for Newsletters, and the ones that I'm not serious about. I'm always reminded that a day will come when I will just have no access, lock out and be done with it. I had used my name's domain and had used the web hosting provided email service and I felt nice using the likes of `webmaster@brajeshwar.com` (early 2000s). Then I got a shorter domain with our family domain and is, now, powered by Google Workspace (with a plan to move to the competitors soon before the yearly plan expires). I had so many domains under the Google Suite free version since its beta. I did upgraded my primary domain to the paid version, when I had few mail delivery issues so I can talk to a person and that was also the time I realize I cannot go back. That was almost/about 10 years ago.
- pkz 4y ago
  It would be interesting to know how many of government agencies use Google email services? Is the email interaction between citizen and state now predominantly in the hands of a foreign third party?
  - bboygravity 4y ago
    In Netherlands: not just the government, also pretty much every major business and even Universities (Groningen comes to mind). And not just Google, but also Microsoft (Teams, Outlook, etc). I've often wondered whether that is the real main reason why so little innovation comes out of Europe vs the US: everything of economic, academic and geopolitical importance in Europe is streamed straight to the US and the sender is paying for the service of having valuable information leakable. Source: Snowden.
    - angulardragon03 4y ago
bushbaba 4y ago
The US should use the current market decline to split up Google. Splitting it up would allow for more competition and overall improve the tech sector. Ideally you'd see the government force a split up Youtube, Cloud, Search, and their Ad Exchange into separate companies.
- einpoklum 4y ago
  If the US government does this, you can be pretty sure it'll keep taking copies of all email in the split-up Google as well.
  - rvba 4y ago
    As if they arent doing this allready
- sumedh 4y ago
  > Ideally you'd see the government force a split up Youtube, Cloud, Search, and their Ad Exchange into separate companies. Google will argue that keeping these services in one company gives free access to consumers. How can the US govt prove that it harms consumers?
  - thfuran 4y ago
    I'd much prefer the standard of "harms competition" except in cases of natural monopoly.
- anticensor 4y ago
  I would rather like to see Google stripped from for-profit status. How Google earns its money does not really allow decoupling Search from Ads.
NorwegianDude 4y ago
Also take into account that there is also a good amount of people using Gmail, without it showing up in the headers of your mail. Most email is automated, and Google is not a popular provider for that, but Google has a huge percentage of human generated emails.
shadowgovt 4y ago
Is the fact that the sender and receiver of an email both have a copy surprising? IIRC, no emails from Hillary Clinton's server, for example, were ever leaked from the server, but the public saw them because one of her regular correspondents had his email compromised.
- UberFly 4y ago
  That we know of. If I remember, she hired some random 3rd party company from Denver to manager her servers. They of course didn't have any kind of security clearance.
- sumedh 4y ago
  > IIRC, no emails from Hillary Clinton's server, for example, were ever leaked from the server, How do you know that. I dont want to make political comments on HN but her server was insecure at some time (aka no encryption) and then accessing the emails on her blackberry in foreign countries.
kazinator 4y ago
Unless the e-mail you send is either encrypted with something like PGP or whatever, or else you send it directly from your machine your friend's SMTP server, using TLS, then the operator of any SMTP forwarding host in between could have your e-mail, not to mention someone just snooping traffic. Speaking of encrypted e-mail, if you send that to a gmail user, then Google only has the fact that that user received an e-mail of a certain size from you on a certain date. People who are paranoid about which data warehouse has their mail should be using encryption.
- upofadown 4y ago
  >...or else you send it directly from your machine your friend's SMTP server, using TLS, ... That is normally what happens these days. Intermediate email forwarding is so rare as to be non-existent. Only a small percentage of email is sent unencrypted between servers[1]. Agreed that email should be encrypted and, perhaps more importantly, signed... [1] https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=pgpfan:starttls https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=pgpfan:starttls
  - kazinator 4y ago
    > Intermediate email forwarding is so rare as to be non-existent. Where did you get this belief? Almost no e-mail user who uses a client to send SMTP right from their PC or mobile device can send directly to their destination, because they don't have a static IP address with e-mail reputation. Directly to the destination meaning: looking up the MX record for the domain of target e-mail address, and contacting that host. People who self-host such e-mail receiving hosts will themselves drop the connection from such a user, if they implement RBL-based anti-spam measures.
webmobdev 4y ago
And that's why services like Tutanota (https://tutanota.com/ https://tutanota.com/) and Proton Mail (http://protonmail.com/ http://protonmail.com/) offer the option to send password protected / encrypted email to third-party. This can be used to prevent Google or Microsoft from spying on your emails as the actual email is never sent to their server. Yes, sharing passwords beforehand can be a pain. But even if you SMS / message them the password, or just put hint to it in the subject - "the pass is your phone number" or "the pass is your fathers name" - it still creates an additional barrier for Google or Microsoft bots to index your email. While we may not be able to do this for every email, we certainly can do this for personal emails. This process also creates awareness in your social network, when they ask you why you are using such convoluted methods to send them email.
- coffee2022 4y ago
  - These domains sound weird (for average Joe) - Even if they office 5GB for they average Joe will try - BTW, I bet they cannot do proper customer service if they have a 10th of the google's customers - We at a German scientific institution got email services from a Berlin based (privacy first, eco-friendly) provider (starting with letter M-). We had significant issues with SSO, email-sync (in outlook), password resets were painful (as these were emailed to the admins in plain-text - seemingly someone manually reset it at the provider), No 2FA, calendar-sync worked awful in iPhones.
ls15 4y ago
What if Google discontinues Gmail next week, like they did with so many other services? Are you prepared?
- dexterdog 4y ago
  Gmail makes way too much money for them
- UberFly 4y ago
  Yes, I use fastmail and my own domain.
- ciphol 4y ago
  In all honesty, I think that would lead to some form of nationalization of Gmail to force it to continue as a service. Approximately half of Americans use Gmail and that is "too big to fail".
open-source-ux 4y ago
The popularity of ChromeOS in US schools means millions of kids require Gmail accounts (since ChromeOS requires sign-in the OS to full use). It's probably true to say that almost every school kid in the US has been captured by Google's embrace. The 'tech community' have little to say on the matter. In fact, developers are more likely to defend Google rather than question unprecedented levels of data collection.
- SXX 4y ago
  AFAIK you can have Google Account with your own email without using GMail. Isnt such account work for ChromeOS? From what I can tell they are fully featured accounts with only mail service being missing. Am I wrong?
- texaslonghorn5 4y ago
  This is false, most schools are using active directory SSO which happens to use Google for Education but could easily be migrated. In fact, many places have Microsoft 365 and Google working at the same time under the same SSO. Yes they are using "Gmail accounts" but that's a far cry from @gmail.com accounts.
- hagen2022 4y ago
  The issue is that there are no proper replacements for Gmail. Too many people (whether opensource fellows or privacy or both) suggest do not use it but there are NO good answers. One cannot expect a local shop or university to host email services 24x7 AND provide world-class security. This is like excel/word/ppt becoming a default file format and use of MS office. Sure libreoffice works but when everyone is using MS products - one has no chance but to use MS. hn always loves fastmail but I bet they cant run a billion logins. No local govt or company has the employees to manage such good features. (Example; I tried once to use apple email, calendar for 20 people. Too many sync problems. When asked in Apple forums they often told me Apple infra is designed for families and not for 20 people)
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    > One cannot expect a local shop or university to host email services 24x7 AND provide world-class security. You're right! That doesn't mean you have to rely on The Borg. I rely on my ISP (admittedly an unusually good ISP); I pay them for mail service, a fiver a month, on my own domain. There are many dedicated commercial email providers that are reliable and secure, such as Fastmail (I've never tried Fastmail).
asim 4y ago
The discussion around email continues to come up time and time again. It yields significant power, it's your online identity effectively, used to access, communicate and unlock everything. We all have some level of discomfort with someone else owning the infrastructure for this having seen what happens if you get locked out. What is the answer? Is it really self hosting? Such a subpar experience. Consumers can't be expected to do that. Maybe it's about moving to something else with backwards compatibility with email but a system you can never be shut out of. If you're stuck with a @gmail.com domain, it's tough, but maybe the switch would be worth it in time. Maybe it's like rent vs buy in real estate. There's no beating owning your own home. Costs more but no one can kick you out unless you stop paying your mortgage. You own it, it's your address, it holds all your possessions. But you don't build the house, someone else does, you just pay for it.
- lowwave 4y ago
  > Costs more but no one can kick you out unless you stop paying your mortgage. that. depends. You can host it cheaply if shared with family members, may be cheaper than paying for email provider.
  - asim 4y ago
    Well this leads to my next question. Community led infrastructure. Why is it not a thing? I think that's social housing in the real world. Why does it not exist for digital services? I know we open source things but nothing is run by a community. A potential outcome is to run email as a community.
    - sedeki 4y ago
      How would that contractually work in practice? Can you give an example of what you mean?
      - asim 4y ago
        I mean it's like any real world thing, potentially non profit. A group of people elected to run public services for everyone else which people pay a fair amount to use. Something that's constantly reviewed, where new members can join and others can move on.
sneak 4y ago
I get far more email from machines (that don’t send via Google) than I do gmail users.
mro_name 4y ago
what is the thing with gmail in 2022 other than lock in?
- dividedbyzero 4y ago
  I tried to move away from the legacy free Google Apps thingy when they threatened to force everyone to pay business rates and even though Gmail isn't what it once was, the competition isn't great either. The one that everyone keeps raving about is located in Australia (which has non-existing data protection laws), most privacy-focused ones are cumbersome and annoying (limited functionality, no IMAP, only our own apps, etc.), the big commercial ones are expensive (this is for family), and a few were half broken (IMAP should work but never did etc.) ... I found a single one from Europe that came reasonably close to Gmail, but then Google decided to keep their Google Apps thingy free for non-commercial use, and I'm happy I don't have to worry about those email accounts for at least a couple more years. Gmail works well in all respects, is well-supported everywhere, and since I'm using my own domain I retain the option of switching if need be. I don't think I have a single person I actually exchange emails with that wouldn't leak them to Google anyway, so why bother.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Price? Best-in-class search? Availability?
  - mro_name 4y ago
    > Price I think one should let the suppliers live and pay for what one uses. 0 is a stupid price, you will be farmed. > Best-in-class search I don't use web-clients to read email, so wrong class. > Availability the track record of google+ and google-reader isn't convincing.
mro_name 4y ago
this bothers me a lot. That bystanders can read my cleartext email is one thing. But that somebody hords and data-mines a huge quantity of them is a bit creepy to say the least, isn't it? I would bounce gmail if my email provider offered that option.
austhin 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/news https://news.ycombinator.com/news
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
From the perspective of yours truly (and probably not anyone else), there is a relatively simple solution to this problem. I have experimented with running SMTP peer-to-peer instead of peer-to-<third_party_intermediary>-to-peer. While I first did this using L2, before Wiregaurd, Tailscale or Headscale existed,^1 I see no reason it could not be done using today's popular L3 software. One approach is the sender and recipient each run their own SMTP server on an overlay network. Each network might have its own interface, /dev/tap[0-100] being one option. Is this perfect in every way. No. Nothing meets that standard. Does it work reliably. Yes. That is good enough for me. That it works is not surprising since the early internet did not have itermediaries like Google and the early mail RFCs had no conception of third party email providers let alone "webmail", now dominated by "Gmail". Needs of "users" do differ and intermediaries might serve a useful purpose for some, even those who can make a conscious choice. Personally I have no need to be able to email every address on the planet let alone allow them to email me! More practically, I can more easily maintain smaller lists of potential senders and recipients, i.e., "networks", each one a separate network interface. Again, needs will differ based on the user. Third party email for personal use is like using a PO Box despite have private property, a house, and an address. There is no reason that everyone cannot have their own mailbox on their own property. Even more, instead of the post office managine these PO Boxes, email uses a private entity that is trying to sell advertising services, and/or brokering direct email marketing. Both systems, snail mail and email, have been largely co-opted by the potential for direct mail marketing, so-called "junk mail". Even if one never sees any junk in their inbox (thanks to "filters"), the junk mail senders are still influencing the system. The continued enablement and presence of those junk senders, who are still sending massive quantities of junk with the help of Big Email, is why third party email providers, like Gmail, block residential IP addresses. You own property, a house and an address but you cannot have your won mailbox. That is how third party email provision works. 1. Heck, one could probably use a "lightning" network too but folks today want to use peer-to-peer overlay networks for "crypto" exclusively, not messaging or any other useful activity. Go figure. This whole means of using networks without third party intermediaries is as old as computer networks themselves. Gamers have long used LANs and overlay networks for communication, since before the internet became popular. Arguably, we could think of everything we do on the internet as a "game" that justifies use of overlays.
NewEntryHN 4y ago
Most of my emails are from services, not people, so I guess Mandrill (and the likes) has most of my emails.
amelius 4y ago
Some companies forbid the use of Gmail by employees. However, they should also block them from sending email to @gmail.com addresses.
Gud 4y ago
I started using my own domain names 20 years or so ago. I let gandi.net host my mail and from what I know they haven’t been involved in any privacy related scandals. I use rsync.net for my backups. I avoid the American internet conglomerates software and services like the plague.
dav43 4y ago
Unpopular on HN, but I just don't see a problem with Google having my email, for what they provide me. Almost unlimited uptime, global redundancy, best search experience, storage all for free. I'm ok with the trade off for now. Its just not worth the hassle.
- Bakary 4y ago
  What made me switch from Gmail is stories of people losing their entire account overnight with no possible appeal process due to an algorithm deciding there was suspicious activity.
  - ajross 4y ago
    > What made me switch from Gmail is stories Yeah, pretty much. Anecdata is the bane of everything big. In a country of 330M people, you'll have a horrific murder every week. You have a billion email users, someone's going to have trouble. You do realize that, realistically, it's probably more likely that Fastmail will fail, or you'll accidentally lose control of your own domain (or have it stolen) than that Google or Microsoft or Yahoo will "lose your account overnight". There are "stories" about startups failing and domain troubles too.
    - Bakary 4y ago
      It's not the only reason, though. Just the thing that solidified the decision to leave. I just came to realize that I was depending on a shady entity for everything. The service I ended up paying for (which is similar to fastmail) can end up failing of course, but it'll take a while and I can always switch to something else once they go into administration. In comparison, I have no idea when or where Google might switch me off, especially since I do a lot of Android and Aurora store tinkering over various devices. Even if Gmail was 100% reliable it would still make sense to not give them everything about my life. Besides, I also get much needed extra email features out of the change.
    - thfuran 4y ago
      That there are occasional errors in flagging accounts is one thing. That there's absolutely no recourse is another. Why would I want to do business with a company that works like that?
bigbacaloa 4y ago
One should regard all one's emails as (at least potentially) public documents.
- ls15 4y ago
  I consider all my emails confidential, but I acknowledge the fact that nefarious players may gain access to my emails.
elchangri 4y ago
This is analogous to Ok Google / Siri ubiquity. Nobody can escape getting their voice scanned because people nearby have them turned on.
pronik 4y ago
The same goes for contacts by the way: you can be as careful as you wish keeping your phone number and address and e-mail address private, as long as you are friends with me and I keep my Google Contacts up to date, Google has that data. And I don't think this is avoidable, unless you consider complete isolation from human contact desireable.
- recursv_thnkng 4y ago
  I noticed this with Tiktok. I put in my number into my profile and got friend suggestions for nearly my entire contact list despite not giving access to it.
rbc 4y ago
I'm still operating a personal email service. It's become more challenging, using TLS, DKIM, SPF, and anti-spam technologies, but I think it is still worth it to keep some measure of control. It makes troubleshooting easier when you can see the logs from the MTA. I've also become a fan of the OpenBSD smtpd/pf/spamd triumvirate for controlling spam. It's effective, without being super complicated.
Consultant32452 4y ago
I wonder how much classified data is stored in random spreadsheets on O365 secured by basic auth.
jmbwell 4y ago
Major vendors have realized this as well, and are putting less information in their emails as a result. If you’re my customer and a Gmail user and I send you order details, financial/credit info, any number of things I might know about you that Google might not know already, Google learns that about you from me. Instead, I’m going to send you an email that prompts you to come back to my site or app to get your tracking number or flight info or whatever. It might not be some other communication service that kills email, but rather apps and push notifications trying to outmaneuver Google.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- crazygringo 4y ago
  I don't know what you're talking about. I get order confirmations from retail stores all the time with full details of my order, every item listed in full detail, last 4 digits of credit card used, etc. I see no change in this over time, nor do I know why companies would even care that an e-mail provider (including Google) would be able to read that information. I don't think this phenomenon exists at all. The only thing I can imagine you referring to is companies having the tracking link open to their own page rather than directly to UPS/FedEx etc., but that's for totally separate reasons that you can see from Narvar's marketing.
  - ffpip 4y ago
    > I see no change in this over time, nor do I know why companies would even care that an e-mail provider (including Google) would be able to read that information. I don't think this phenomenon exists at all. https://thehustle.co/09032020-amazon-order-confirmations/ https://thehustle.co/09032020-amazon-order-confirmations/ https://www.macobserver.com/link/amazon-no-longer-including-item-details-in-order-and-shipment-emails/ https://www.macobserver.com/link/amazon-no-longer-including-...
    - crazygringo 4y ago
      Thanks, but so as far as I can tell from that, Amazon is the only company to have made this change, and it's pure speculation as to why. I just checked my e-mails, and Target and Wal-Mart still include an itemized list in your order confirmation e-mail. So does Best Buy, J. Crew, GAP, Shopify, eBay, and literally every other store I order from. So a single company made this change, and nobody knows why? That's not a phenomenon or trend.
derekzhouzhen 4y ago
The biggest problem of Gmail is what they have that we have, it is what they let people have. Ever have a fight with Gmail's spam filter?
michaeltimo 4y ago
Which email-service do you recommend that lets me use my custom domain? I know protonmail, but I'm looking for other options.

453 points by pabs3 4y ago

Unencrypted email is not private, never has been, never will be. The real problem is handing over your digital identity to Google, not the content of emails.

Tepix 4y ago
Nowdays, even unencrypted email can be private, thanks to opportunistic encryption. Not when you're using Gmail of course.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  Opportunistic encryption only encrypts mail transport between mail servers. Both the sending and receiving servers can read the plaintext.
  - Tepix 4y ago
    As long as both parties run their own mailservers, it's cool!
brnt 4y ago
What I dislike is that email addresses have become the primary key of online identity. Many services don't even have usernames anymore. I still think that government should furnish something like an online postal address. Protected with gov issued hardware keys (U2F?), white listing for recipients maybe. To be used only for gov business, banking, gas, water, etc. If those things are essential to life, and in turn depend heavily on email (here they do for sure), they should not be handled by fickle Big Tech.

MaxBarraclough 4y ago

Eben Moglen, law professor and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center, gave a talk on privacy that discussed exactly this. I believe it was in 2011. I would urge you also to consider that privacy is an ecological rather than a transactional substance. This is a crucial distinction from what you are taught to believe by the people whose job it is to earn off you. Those who wish to earn off you want to define privacy as a thing you transact about with them, just the two of you. They offer you free email service, in response to which you let them read all the mail, and that’s that. It’s just a transaction between two parties. They offer you free web hosting for your social communications, in return for watching everybody look at everything. They assert that’s a transaction in which only the parties themselves are engaged. This is a convenient fraudulence. Another misdirection, misleading, and plain lying proposition. Because - as I suggested in the analytic definition of the components of privacy - privacy is always a relation among people. It is not transactional, an agreement between a listener or a spy or a peephole keeper and the person being spied on. If you accept this supposedly bilateral offer, to provide email service for you for free as long as it can all be read, then everybody who corresponds with you has been subjected to the bargain, which was supposedly bilateral in nature. (Full transcript available at [0], video at [1].) Interestingly I see I'm not the first to quote this at length on HackerNews [2]. [0] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qfloojVeUQ0J:www.snowdenandthefuture.info/PartIII.html https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qflooj... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRs8ZPbHtos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRs8ZPbHtos [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747916 (Link-rot has eaten the original [0] URL, and archive.org is seemingly down, but I realise the irony in linking to Google's cached page, as well as their copy of the video.)

juunpp 4y ago

I have actually been receiving much spam from gmail addresses lately and have considered banning the domain altogether. > I was surprised to find out that my friend Peter Eckersley — a very privacy conscious person who is Technology Projects Director at the EFF — used Gmail I find that the EFF does this more often than not, like how they also criticize Amazon for giving police warrant-less access to Ring cameras... and then stream their online gatherings live on Twitch. I find their messaging sometimes does not tie well with their actions.

fastball 4y ago
That last point doesn't sound very hypocritical to me. There is a difference between a feed that is meant to be public and one that is not.
javajosh 4y ago
>police warrant-less access to Ring cameras... and then stream their online gatherings live on Twitch Streaming a public event on twitch vs on-demand warrentless police access to on-prem cameras? Am I missing something or are these two things not just not in the neighborhood, they are on different planets.
- jjulius 4y ago
  >Am I missing something or are these two things not just not in the neighborhood, they are on different planets. Amazon owns Twitch. I think OP is highlighting that the EFF speaks out against Amazon's privacy practices while simultaneously supporting Amazon financially. Edit: "I think..."
  - eropple 4y ago
    Are you offering to pay for them to host their own streaming solution and volunteering to handle technical support for users who have trouble with it? This gotcha-game is tiring. People don't have to like Amazon to realize that they and YouTube are the only practical game in town for free live streaming.

duxup 4y ago

I remember when I was horrified that apps would ask for (or not…) all my contacts. But then I realized most people on my contacts probably wouldn’t say no so someone could easily use that information to guesstimate my contacts by using everyone else’s contacts.

taneq 4y ago
Did that realisation make you less horrified?
- toxicFork 4y ago
  > To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror, to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror. Frank Herbert /s/mortality/your information is all over the internet/

Samon 4y ago

For me, owning my own email domain is far more about control than privacy. I currently use some MX and SMTP trickery to forward all of my email to Gmail, effectively using Gmail as my 'email client' - but because the domain is mine, I can change that without too much headache, unlike if I were just using an @gmail.com address.

jwalton 4y ago
How do your have your outgoing mail configured? Up until recently Gmail would let you send email from another domain, but they seem to have shut this down.
- Tagbert 4y ago
  I have my domain hosted on a service that provides web hosting and email. I configured Gmail to pickup that email and merge with my gmail mails. I can choose to send as either my gmail address or my personal domain address. I just tried it now and it worked just fine.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Also about cost? You could use proton, but gmail is free I guess.
defaultcompany 4y ago
You don’t own a domain name you rent it. If you ever forget to renew it or you are unable to renew it for some reason then it becomes available for anyone else to register. At that point the new owner can receive all your email and potentially access any accounts which use that email as 2FA. I’m not saying you should never do this but it’s not a silver bullet.
- jamiek88 4y ago
  yep cos of Covid namecheap sold my domain to a squatter who now wants $10k for something i've renewed for years for $12. That was so shitty coming back round to reality and everything broken. Still upset about it. To this day I have no idea why the card didn't pay as always.

ggm 4y ago

google/gmail is also one of the principal agents which declares by fiat "your own domain self-run mail is spam because I think its spam" which then propagates to other mail providers. SPF/DKIM no matter: if they decide it's spammy, un-doing this decision is appeal to a star chamber you cannot interact with directly.

jeffbee 4y ago
By what mechanism do you believe this information "propagates" to other mail operators?
- ggm 4y ago
  Aside from the sharing of RBL lists, the reflexive bouncing of mails? SMTP error codes rejecting delivery transitively? Maybe I'm wrong and there is no information sharing here? Not impossible or implausible. Does Macys tell Gimbels? Another effect here is volume. That's non communicating between the big players but would inevitably lead to similar outcomes if they rank domains by volume/score weights. Hosting a small mail domain in Google is a good way not to get marked bad it seems. Postini filtering on your gsuite user side is an added bonus. I've yet to withdraw a domain from gsuite so I don't know how long it stays "acceptable" But I do know Gmail is one of the principal "not an acceptable sender" paths. As to how that flows or informs o365 or any other player, I may be making a bridge too far.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
imhoguy 4y ago
> which then propagates to other mail providers Have you checked your mail server is configured properly and it doesn't act as open relay? > SPF/DKIM no matter SPF/DKIM is not enough, I needed DMARC and DNS PTR. You need static IP from some serious hosting, make sure IP is not black listed, dynamic home ISP addresses are out of question. Also register with Outlook SNDS https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/snds/ https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/snds/ , and Google FBL https://postmaster.google.com/ https://postmaster.google.com/ . It is a lot of hops but I have done it once a few years ago and now it all works fine for me, got 100% delivery for small traffic.

dang 4y ago

Related: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10229928 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10229928 - Sept 2015 (53 comments) Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7731022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7731022 - May 2014 (103 comments)

bagels 4y ago

Let's say theoretically I did a gdpr request to Google to delete my emails, do they have to delete the counterparty copy?

quickthrower2 4y ago
I doubt it. It is not reasonably “your data”. If I copy the email you sent me to dropbox would be the same sort of thing.
MereInterest 4y ago
From Article 4 of the GDPR: > ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person; As I (entirely non-lawyerly) interpret it, you could not do a GDPR request to delete the counterparty emails, because those are things written by you, not information about you. However, an email in which you state "I broke my leg today." would be personal data, because it can be connected to your identity and is information relating to you.
webmobdev 4y ago
I doubt it - when you send an email to someone, they also have the rights to store it in their inbox.

cglan 4y ago

Having your own email/domain isn’t about privacy. Email has become essentially the key to almost everything in modern life. If I lose access to my email I lose access to basically everything I own and it would be a massive hassle to switch emails. Banks, schools, apps, etc. Often times these services won’t even let you change to a new email if you don’t have access to an existing one. Some use email as 2factor. It’s a nightmare. Owning your own domain separately is crucial. Who hosts your email matters less.

hilbert42 4y ago
Heaven forbid, how did you become so utterly dependent on this technology? You're probably one of those who insists in using your phone instead of paying cash or using cards. You also probably use Twitter, Facebook and Google's Gmail too. If so, then you can't be helped. If you organize thing right you don't need to be so dependent on ephemeral technology (unless you're in Communist China, governments haven't made email compulsory yet. If they ever do then I'd demand free hardware to participate). BTW, I'm not an email Luddite, I have and have had email addresses since the late 1970s (in the days before the internet) using The Source etc. and after that I've run my own email servers and so on. Right, I was in the vanguard of the email service but I've never let it rule me or my life. P.S.: it really isn't that hard, for years I successfully ran a large IT department in a well-known organization and I refused to have an email address because I got damn sick of the CEO defaulting to email when all he had to do was to walk out of his office door and into mine—or use the good old POTS telephone! Yes, there are still many alternatives if you look (that is, unless you actually like being ruled over).
YetAnotherNick 4y ago
Is it known that domain registrars are better than GMail in this regard? Not asking sarcastically, but I had my domain taken over by registrar(not released to public, just registrar took control of it) after few week of notice when auto renew failed to charge my credit card, and my credit card was working fine elsewhere. Also many registrar like Namecheap cancelled subscription for Russian customers during this invasion. Not to mention incidents like [0] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32470266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32470266

quickthrower2 4y ago

A year after Snowden.

Barrin92 4y ago

">I have run my own email server which I use for all of my non-work correspondence. I do so to keep autonomy, control, and privacy over my email" if you want to retain control or privacy over correspondence, email is a horrible medium because by design anything can be forwarded, shared and copy&pasted trivially and this is done all the time. One guy is enough to leak an entire email chain. Good rule for email is, treat writing email as if you're speaking publicly.

Timwi 4y ago
What medium are you thinking of where messages can't be copy & pasted?
denton-scratch 4y ago
> Good rule for email is, treat writing email as if you're speaking publicly. ...and if you treat it that way, then it's not a "horrible medium" (for "publicly", I would prefer to substitute "on the record"). If you don't like email, that's cool; there are plenty of other messaging services you can use instead. But: - Your bank doesn't use them - Your friends don't use them - They are usually proprietary and opaque - You might lose your account, with no recourse Email is the universal baseline, the single communications channel that nearly everyone has access to.
- TillE 4y ago
  > - Your friends don't use them Nobody under like 40 uses email for personal communication. Yeah it's a legacy medium for stuff like your bank, maybe it's the least terrible option for B2B communication, but email has largely been replaced already.
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    It's the default: you need an email to make all those other accounts. Everyone has an email (assuming they have internet at all). Not everyone has a goofacetwat account, or whatever the newest thing is.
4y ago

SanjayMehta 4y ago

My main email is hosted on a local provider. All my junk mails are hosted by google.

gorgoiler 4y ago

Email is one technology with two quite different use cases: reply and noreply. The former is the sending and receiving of regular correspondence. The latter is the identity stuff and is the majority of my traffic: things like bills, receipts, tickets, reminders, security alerts, login confirmations, etc. In 2022 I’m more worried about an unregulated company monopolising the noreply part. It’s an enormous part of my life.

durnygbur 4y ago

Google has most of my contacts and personal info because it has all of yours.

Brajeshwar 4y ago

I think this is everywhere. In India, people in the departments, especially the Governments usually ask, "What is your Gmail?" Almost everyone uses Gmail here and it is extremely rare to find their own custom domain. I'm actually surprised that the Government Departments do not have a service that takes care of these! They will fine Google but almost all of the government email IDs are Gmail. I was one of those that distributed hundreds if not thousands of Gmail invites when it started. However, since 2010-ish, I left Gmail to be just for Newsletters, and the ones that I'm not serious about. I'm always reminded that a day will come when I will just have no access, lock out and be done with it. I had used my name's domain and had used the web hosting provided email service and I felt nice using the likes of `webmaster@brajeshwar.com` (early 2000s). Then I got a shorter domain with our family domain and is, now, powered by Google Workspace (with a plan to move to the competitors soon before the yearly plan expires). I had so many domains under the Google Suite free version since its beta. I did upgraded my primary domain to the paid version, when I had few mail delivery issues so I can talk to a person and that was also the time I realize I cannot go back. That was almost/about 10 years ago.

pkz 4y ago
It would be interesting to know how many of government agencies use Google email services? Is the email interaction between citizen and state now predominantly in the hands of a foreign third party?
- bboygravity 4y ago
  In Netherlands: not just the government, also pretty much every major business and even Universities (Groningen comes to mind). And not just Google, but also Microsoft (Teams, Outlook, etc). I've often wondered whether that is the real main reason why so little innovation comes out of Europe vs the US: everything of economic, academic and geopolitical importance in Europe is streamed straight to the US and the sender is paying for the service of having valuable information leakable. Source: Snowden.
  - angulardragon03 4y ago

bushbaba 4y ago

The US should use the current market decline to split up Google. Splitting it up would allow for more competition and overall improve the tech sector. Ideally you'd see the government force a split up Youtube, Cloud, Search, and their Ad Exchange into separate companies.

einpoklum 4y ago
If the US government does this, you can be pretty sure it'll keep taking copies of all email in the split-up Google as well.
- rvba 4y ago
  As if they arent doing this allready
sumedh 4y ago
> Ideally you'd see the government force a split up Youtube, Cloud, Search, and their Ad Exchange into separate companies. Google will argue that keeping these services in one company gives free access to consumers. How can the US govt prove that it harms consumers?
- thfuran 4y ago
  I'd much prefer the standard of "harms competition" except in cases of natural monopoly.
anticensor 4y ago
I would rather like to see Google stripped from for-profit status. How Google earns its money does not really allow decoupling Search from Ads.

NorwegianDude 4y ago

Also take into account that there is also a good amount of people using Gmail, without it showing up in the headers of your mail. Most email is automated, and Google is not a popular provider for that, but Google has a huge percentage of human generated emails.

shadowgovt 4y ago

Is the fact that the sender and receiver of an email both have a copy surprising? IIRC, no emails from Hillary Clinton's server, for example, were ever leaked from the server, but the public saw them because one of her regular correspondents had his email compromised.

UberFly 4y ago
That we know of. If I remember, she hired some random 3rd party company from Denver to manager her servers. They of course didn't have any kind of security clearance.
sumedh 4y ago
> IIRC, no emails from Hillary Clinton's server, for example, were ever leaked from the server, How do you know that. I dont want to make political comments on HN but her server was insecure at some time (aka no encryption) and then accessing the emails on her blackberry in foreign countries.

kazinator 4y ago

Unless the e-mail you send is either encrypted with something like PGP or whatever, or else you send it directly from your machine your friend's SMTP server, using TLS, then the operator of any SMTP forwarding host in between could have your e-mail, not to mention someone just snooping traffic. Speaking of encrypted e-mail, if you send that to a gmail user, then Google only has the fact that that user received an e-mail of a certain size from you on a certain date. People who are paranoid about which data warehouse has their mail should be using encryption.

upofadown 4y ago
>...or else you send it directly from your machine your friend's SMTP server, using TLS, ... That is normally what happens these days. Intermediate email forwarding is so rare as to be non-existent. Only a small percentage of email is sent unencrypted between servers[1]. Agreed that email should be encrypted and, perhaps more importantly, signed... [1] https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=pgpfan:starttls https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=pgpfan:starttls
- kazinator 4y ago
  > Intermediate email forwarding is so rare as to be non-existent. Where did you get this belief? Almost no e-mail user who uses a client to send SMTP right from their PC or mobile device can send directly to their destination, because they don't have a static IP address with e-mail reputation. Directly to the destination meaning: looking up the MX record for the domain of target e-mail address, and contacting that host. People who self-host such e-mail receiving hosts will themselves drop the connection from such a user, if they implement RBL-based anti-spam measures.

webmobdev 4y ago

And that's why services like Tutanota (https://tutanota.com/ https://tutanota.com/) and Proton Mail (http://protonmail.com/ http://protonmail.com/) offer the option to send password protected / encrypted email to third-party. This can be used to prevent Google or Microsoft from spying on your emails as the actual email is never sent to their server. Yes, sharing passwords beforehand can be a pain. But even if you SMS / message them the password, or just put hint to it in the subject - "the pass is your phone number" or "the pass is your fathers name" - it still creates an additional barrier for Google or Microsoft bots to index your email. While we may not be able to do this for every email, we certainly can do this for personal emails. This process also creates awareness in your social network, when they ask you why you are using such convoluted methods to send them email.

coffee2022 4y ago
- These domains sound weird (for average Joe) - Even if they office 5GB for they average Joe will try - BTW, I bet they cannot do proper customer service if they have a 10th of the google's customers - We at a German scientific institution got email services from a Berlin based (privacy first, eco-friendly) provider (starting with letter M-). We had significant issues with SSO, email-sync (in outlook), password resets were painful (as these were emailed to the admins in plain-text - seemingly someone manually reset it at the provider), No 2FA, calendar-sync worked awful in iPhones.

ls15 4y ago

What if Google discontinues Gmail next week, like they did with so many other services? Are you prepared?

dexterdog 4y ago
Gmail makes way too much money for them
UberFly 4y ago
Yes, I use fastmail and my own domain.
ciphol 4y ago
In all honesty, I think that would lead to some form of nationalization of Gmail to force it to continue as a service. Approximately half of Americans use Gmail and that is "too big to fail".

open-source-ux 4y ago

The popularity of ChromeOS in US schools means millions of kids require Gmail accounts (since ChromeOS requires sign-in the OS to full use). It's probably true to say that almost every school kid in the US has been captured by Google's embrace. The 'tech community' have little to say on the matter. In fact, developers are more likely to defend Google rather than question unprecedented levels of data collection.

SXX 4y ago
AFAIK you can have Google Account with your own email without using GMail. Isnt such account work for ChromeOS? From what I can tell they are fully featured accounts with only mail service being missing. Am I wrong?
texaslonghorn5 4y ago
This is false, most schools are using active directory SSO which happens to use Google for Education but could easily be migrated. In fact, many places have Microsoft 365 and Google working at the same time under the same SSO. Yes they are using "Gmail accounts" but that's a far cry from @gmail.com accounts.
hagen2022 4y ago
The issue is that there are no proper replacements for Gmail. Too many people (whether opensource fellows or privacy or both) suggest do not use it but there are NO good answers. One cannot expect a local shop or university to host email services 24x7 AND provide world-class security. This is like excel/word/ppt becoming a default file format and use of MS office. Sure libreoffice works but when everyone is using MS products - one has no chance but to use MS. hn always loves fastmail but I bet they cant run a billion logins. No local govt or company has the employees to manage such good features. (Example; I tried once to use apple email, calendar for 20 people. Too many sync problems. When asked in Apple forums they often told me Apple infra is designed for families and not for 20 people)
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  > One cannot expect a local shop or university to host email services 24x7 AND provide world-class security. You're right! That doesn't mean you have to rely on The Borg. I rely on my ISP (admittedly an unusually good ISP); I pay them for mail service, a fiver a month, on my own domain. There are many dedicated commercial email providers that are reliable and secure, such as Fastmail (I've never tried Fastmail).

asim 4y ago

The discussion around email continues to come up time and time again. It yields significant power, it's your online identity effectively, used to access, communicate and unlock everything. We all have some level of discomfort with someone else owning the infrastructure for this having seen what happens if you get locked out. What is the answer? Is it really self hosting? Such a subpar experience. Consumers can't be expected to do that. Maybe it's about moving to something else with backwards compatibility with email but a system you can never be shut out of. If you're stuck with a @gmail.com domain, it's tough, but maybe the switch would be worth it in time. Maybe it's like rent vs buy in real estate. There's no beating owning your own home. Costs more but no one can kick you out unless you stop paying your mortgage. You own it, it's your address, it holds all your possessions. But you don't build the house, someone else does, you just pay for it.

lowwave 4y ago
> Costs more but no one can kick you out unless you stop paying your mortgage. that. depends. You can host it cheaply if shared with family members, may be cheaper than paying for email provider.
- asim 4y ago
  Well this leads to my next question. Community led infrastructure. Why is it not a thing? I think that's social housing in the real world. Why does it not exist for digital services? I know we open source things but nothing is run by a community. A potential outcome is to run email as a community.
  - sedeki 4y ago
    How would that contractually work in practice? Can you give an example of what you mean?
    - asim 4y ago
      I mean it's like any real world thing, potentially non profit. A group of people elected to run public services for everyone else which people pay a fair amount to use. Something that's constantly reviewed, where new members can join and others can move on.

sneak 4y ago

I get far more email from machines (that don’t send via Google) than I do gmail users.

mro_name 4y ago

what is the thing with gmail in 2022 other than lock in?

dividedbyzero 4y ago
I tried to move away from the legacy free Google Apps thingy when they threatened to force everyone to pay business rates and even though Gmail isn't what it once was, the competition isn't great either. The one that everyone keeps raving about is located in Australia (which has non-existing data protection laws), most privacy-focused ones are cumbersome and annoying (limited functionality, no IMAP, only our own apps, etc.), the big commercial ones are expensive (this is for family), and a few were half broken (IMAP should work but never did etc.) ... I found a single one from Europe that came reasonably close to Gmail, but then Google decided to keep their Google Apps thingy free for non-commercial use, and I'm happy I don't have to worry about those email accounts for at least a couple more years. Gmail works well in all respects, is well-supported everywhere, and since I'm using my own domain I retain the option of switching if need be. I don't think I have a single person I actually exchange emails with that wouldn't leak them to Google anyway, so why bother.
jeffbee 4y ago
Price? Best-in-class search? Availability?
- mro_name 4y ago
  > Price I think one should let the suppliers live and pay for what one uses. 0 is a stupid price, you will be farmed. > Best-in-class search I don't use web-clients to read email, so wrong class. > Availability the track record of google+ and google-reader isn't convincing.

mro_name 4y ago

this bothers me a lot. That bystanders can read my cleartext email is one thing. But that somebody hords and data-mines a huge quantity of them is a bit creepy to say the least, isn't it? I would bounce gmail if my email provider offered that option.

austhin 4y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/news https://news.ycombinator.com/news

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

From the perspective of yours truly (and probably not anyone else), there is a relatively simple solution to this problem. I have experimented with running SMTP peer-to-peer instead of peer-to-<third_party_intermediary>-to-peer. While I first did this using L2, before Wiregaurd, Tailscale or Headscale existed,^1 I see no reason it could not be done using today's popular L3 software. One approach is the sender and recipient each run their own SMTP server on an overlay network. Each network might have its own interface, /dev/tap[0-100] being one option. Is this perfect in every way. No. Nothing meets that standard. Does it work reliably. Yes. That is good enough for me. That it works is not surprising since the early internet did not have itermediaries like Google and the early mail RFCs had no conception of third party email providers let alone "webmail", now dominated by "Gmail". Needs of "users" do differ and intermediaries might serve a useful purpose for some, even those who can make a conscious choice. Personally I have no need to be able to email every address on the planet let alone allow them to email me! More practically, I can more easily maintain smaller lists of potential senders and recipients, i.e., "networks", each one a separate network interface. Again, needs will differ based on the user. Third party email for personal use is like using a PO Box despite have private property, a house, and an address. There is no reason that everyone cannot have their own mailbox on their own property. Even more, instead of the post office managine these PO Boxes, email uses a private entity that is trying to sell advertising services, and/or brokering direct email marketing. Both systems, snail mail and email, have been largely co-opted by the potential for direct mail marketing, so-called "junk mail". Even if one never sees any junk in their inbox (thanks to "filters"), the junk mail senders are still influencing the system. The continued enablement and presence of those junk senders, who are still sending massive quantities of junk with the help of Big Email, is why third party email providers, like Gmail, block residential IP addresses. You own property, a house and an address but you cannot have your won mailbox. That is how third party email provision works. 1. Heck, one could probably use a "lightning" network too but folks today want to use peer-to-peer overlay networks for "crypto" exclusively, not messaging or any other useful activity. Go figure. This whole means of using networks without third party intermediaries is as old as computer networks themselves. Gamers have long used LANs and overlay networks for communication, since before the internet became popular. Arguably, we could think of everything we do on the internet as a "game" that justifies use of overlays.

NewEntryHN 4y ago

Most of my emails are from services, not people, so I guess Mandrill (and the likes) has most of my emails.

amelius 4y ago

Some companies forbid the use of Gmail by employees. However, they should also block them from sending email to @gmail.com addresses.

Gud 4y ago

I started using my own domain names 20 years or so ago. I let gandi.net host my mail and from what I know they haven’t been involved in any privacy related scandals. I use rsync.net for my backups. I avoid the American internet conglomerates software and services like the plague.

dav43 4y ago

Unpopular on HN, but I just don't see a problem with Google having my email, for what they provide me. Almost unlimited uptime, global redundancy, best search experience, storage all for free. I'm ok with the trade off for now. Its just not worth the hassle.

Bakary 4y ago
What made me switch from Gmail is stories of people losing their entire account overnight with no possible appeal process due to an algorithm deciding there was suspicious activity.
- ajross 4y ago
  > What made me switch from Gmail is stories Yeah, pretty much. Anecdata is the bane of everything big. In a country of 330M people, you'll have a horrific murder every week. You have a billion email users, someone's going to have trouble. You do realize that, realistically, it's probably more likely that Fastmail will fail, or you'll accidentally lose control of your own domain (or have it stolen) than that Google or Microsoft or Yahoo will "lose your account overnight". There are "stories" about startups failing and domain troubles too.
  - Bakary 4y ago
    It's not the only reason, though. Just the thing that solidified the decision to leave. I just came to realize that I was depending on a shady entity for everything. The service I ended up paying for (which is similar to fastmail) can end up failing of course, but it'll take a while and I can always switch to something else once they go into administration. In comparison, I have no idea when or where Google might switch me off, especially since I do a lot of Android and Aurora store tinkering over various devices. Even if Gmail was 100% reliable it would still make sense to not give them everything about my life. Besides, I also get much needed extra email features out of the change.
  - thfuran 4y ago
    That there are occasional errors in flagging accounts is one thing. That there's absolutely no recourse is another. Why would I want to do business with a company that works like that?

bigbacaloa 4y ago

One should regard all one's emails as (at least potentially) public documents.

ls15 4y ago
I consider all my emails confidential, but I acknowledge the fact that nefarious players may gain access to my emails.

elchangri 4y ago

This is analogous to Ok Google / Siri ubiquity. Nobody can escape getting their voice scanned because people nearby have them turned on.

pronik 4y ago

The same goes for contacts by the way: you can be as careful as you wish keeping your phone number and address and e-mail address private, as long as you are friends with me and I keep my Google Contacts up to date, Google has that data. And I don't think this is avoidable, unless you consider complete isolation from human contact desireable.

recursv_thnkng 4y ago
I noticed this with Tiktok. I put in my number into my profile and got friend suggestions for nearly my entire contact list despite not giving access to it.

rbc 4y ago

I'm still operating a personal email service. It's become more challenging, using TLS, DKIM, SPF, and anti-spam technologies, but I think it is still worth it to keep some measure of control. It makes troubleshooting easier when you can see the logs from the MTA. I've also become a fan of the OpenBSD smtpd/pf/spamd triumvirate for controlling spam. It's effective, without being super complicated.

Consultant32452 4y ago

I wonder how much classified data is stored in random spreadsheets on O365 secured by basic auth.

jmbwell 4y ago

Major vendors have realized this as well, and are putting less information in their emails as a result. If you’re my customer and a Gmail user and I send you order details, financial/credit info, any number of things I might know about you that Google might not know already, Google learns that about you from me. Instead, I’m going to send you an email that prompts you to come back to my site or app to get your tracking number or flight info or whatever. It might not be some other communication service that kills email, but rather apps and push notifications trying to outmaneuver Google.

deleted 4y ago
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crazygringo 4y ago
I don't know what you're talking about. I get order confirmations from retail stores all the time with full details of my order, every item listed in full detail, last 4 digits of credit card used, etc. I see no change in this over time, nor do I know why companies would even care that an e-mail provider (including Google) would be able to read that information. I don't think this phenomenon exists at all. The only thing I can imagine you referring to is companies having the tracking link open to their own page rather than directly to UPS/FedEx etc., but that's for totally separate reasons that you can see from Narvar's marketing.
- ffpip 4y ago
  > I see no change in this over time, nor do I know why companies would even care that an e-mail provider (including Google) would be able to read that information. I don't think this phenomenon exists at all. https://thehustle.co/09032020-amazon-order-confirmations/ https://thehustle.co/09032020-amazon-order-confirmations/ https://www.macobserver.com/link/amazon-no-longer-including-item-details-in-order-and-shipment-emails/ https://www.macobserver.com/link/amazon-no-longer-including-...
  - crazygringo 4y ago
    Thanks, but so as far as I can tell from that, Amazon is the only company to have made this change, and it's pure speculation as to why. I just checked my e-mails, and Target and Wal-Mart still include an itemized list in your order confirmation e-mail. So does Best Buy, J. Crew, GAP, Shopify, eBay, and literally every other store I order from. So a single company made this change, and nobody knows why? That's not a phenomenon or trend.

derekzhouzhen 4y ago

The biggest problem of Gmail is what they have that we have, it is what they let people have. Ever have a fight with Gmail's spam filter?

michaeltimo 4y ago

Which email-service do you recommend that lets me use my custom domain? I know protonmail, but I'm looking for other options.