18 ms·

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

by 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
- komali2 4y ago
  But what's the alternative? Does SMTP even work without a domain? I dipped my toes in this far enough to connect a custom domain to a mailbox hosted by bluehost so I don't know too much but I always seek to separate from Google et al wherever possible. I thought the buck stops at DNS and domain registration though, short of like, that gnu internet project I vaguely remember, what's the alternative?
  - thinkloop 4y ago
  - csande17 4y ago
    You can theoretically send email to an IP address directly, like someone@[127.0.0.1], but I imagine a lot of the programs and websites you'd want to use don't know that. And you're still left with the problem of needing to get that IP address from someone who can arbitrarily take it away from you.
  - justsomehnguy 4y ago
    > Does SMTP even work without a domain It is, but don't expecting people understand what komali@13.55.66.77 is a perfectly valid address, nor the anti-spam systems or designers of web/mail apps and services.
- yuvalr1 4y ago
  Sounds bad. Is there anything we can do about it? What is the most reliable domain registrar?
  - SXX 4y ago
    So far Gandi was posted as reliable company and over last 10 years I had no issues with them. One good feature is that you dont have to be owner to renew domain name registered with them. So in case you temporary lose access to your account you can still pay for domains. They also allow to keep credit balance for auto renew. I really didnt have much of issues to talk about so no idea how good is their support at solving them, but at least I have peace of mind when it comes to renewal.
cube00 4y ago
Using your own domain also has advantages in terms of being able to use aliases for different websites so (when, not if) an address gets leaked you can > /dev/null it. If you're cheap like me you can give family members their own subdomain so everyone can have aliases for the cost of a single domain. It's sad to think back on myself nearly two decades ago when Gmail first launched as invitation service and I thought I was being smart by not paying for my own domain, little did I know how evil Google would turn out to be in terms of locking people out of their own accounts with no recourse.
- arglebargle123 4y ago
  Not defending big G here in the slightest but you can do that with Gmail aliases too: Someaddr+alias@gmail resolves to Someaddr@gmail.
  - 400thecat 4y ago
    OK, but if the point was to obfuscate your "precious" address and use some other "throwaway" address, then this does not work. Your email address can be easily deconstructed and used for spam
  - jasec57322 4y ago
    Most providers now block Gmail addresses containing . or +
    - danaris 4y ago
      This has not been my experience.
jesuscript 4y ago
Go through that exercise of ditching that email. You will find out the 2-3 things you need absolute plan a/b/c for. Seriously, reset your email password to something you can never remember and write it down and have someone hold it for a month (don’t tell them what is it, tuck it in an envelope). Let your mind run circles around your fears and you’ll find out how little that email account owns you. Freezing one credit card will shut off all your frivolous subscriptions (Spotify, Netflix, Prime). You’ll call your internet provider because you don’t want that cut off. You’ll call your bank, brokerage. You’ll remember your bosses contact info, and the one person at work you trust. You’ll let the most important people know (could be as few as one) that you’re off the grid, in your terms. You’ll memorize their number. You’ll realize all the people you could care less about, or they about you, if neither of you ever heard from each other again. Kind of a freeing thing. Then you’ll make a new email, and you’ll never add that much cruft to it ever again.
- hilbert42 4y ago
  Exactly! Good one. People just don't realize how much of this stuff is just jetsam and dross. What the hell would happen if the service ever seriously failed for long periods or GPS failed overnight (which it easily could)? People would have to resort to what they did pre-internet. Back then, the world still worked (and some would argue even better because the internet 'toy' wasn't around to distract everyone and wreak havoc on the world). Believe it or not, we actually built the modern world without email and the smartphone.
- smaudet 4y ago
  More applicable TBH with e.g. Facebook, but I generally agree...
- lexandstuff 4y ago
  Sounds like an insane inconvenience. Sorry, what was the point of doing all this again? Just to prove you can?
  - kuramitropolis 4y ago
    Nah, just to prove that you can't.
YeBanKo 4y ago
What email do you use with domain registrar? I ended up switching most if mine domains to google domains simply because i find its ui more convenient for me, all eggs in one basket i guess. But how do you ensure that you aren’t gonna loose access to your domain account?
- cube00 4y ago
  Given the way Google locks out accounts with no support or appeal I can't think of a worse registrar to use. I use my ISP's email address with my registrar, if they want to keep getting paid each month its in their interests to keep that email address working.
  - YeBanKo 4y ago
    At this point some government entity should provide a way to have an inalienable electronic address. There are strong protections for regular mail, that ensure that mail gets delivered. Cell carriers are required to port numbers. Since email addresses are tied to domain, there should be some usps-like service that allows to have an address, that can be related to a provider of your choosing. And this address is tied to your identity, which you can verify by physically visiting usps or dmv if all else fails.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
      No thank you. The government doesn't need even more power over my life.
    - denton-scratch 4y ago
      > ensure that mail gets delivered Email is intrinsically an unreliable service, and always has been. It's a "best-effort" service. But at least email is honest about it up-front, and tries to address reliability in the RFCs. Not that Google cares much about RFCs.
dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
> Who hosts your email matters less With my own domain being hosted by Google Legacy Workspace or whatever they call it, I've been wondering about this, and wondering if there has there any evidence of Google cutting off an entire domain randomly. To deal with that possibility I've been thinking what the easiest and most reliable way of providing a "failover" for my domain's mail is. Has anyone dealt with this successfully?
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  Buy Fastmail account (seriously, they should pay us money for advertising them so much). In your DNS/registrar settings add Fastmail as a secondary MX, disable DKIM and SPF. Customize it for your needs (necessary mailboxes/addresses/identities etc). Switch over primary MX to FM (maybe keeping G as a secondary for a week). Somewhat optional, but requires some effort - make G send any incoming email to some address not on your domain. You can buy some temp domain and slap it to FM too, it doesn't matter, except you would have two copies of mails for migration time. After mails start to flow to FM reliably (not from Google) remove G. from MX records completely. At this point you would know if something is wrong if some mail would be routed through G. instead of FM (by receiving them to that forwading address). If everything is okay - remove your G. workplace so it has no chance to mess things up. Before that move your mail from G to FM. If it's only thousands - even connecting Outlook (and maybe Thunderbird?) to both through IMAP and drag and drop mails from one account to another would work. If it's millions... clean up it first. You don't need news on newest sales from 2014. PS I'm not moved out from my Gmail account but I culled things there HARD. I also moved everything worthy (notably - registrars and mail providers) to my personal domain mail addresses. If I lose it - it wouldn't be that painful anymore.
  - stavros 4y ago
    > Buy Fastmail account (seriously, they should pay us money for advertising them so much). They do pay us money, that's what the referral fee is.
    - justsomehnguy 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
vietvu 4y ago
Now think about it, what will I do when Google suddendly decide to ban my email? I don't know, my life is fucked.
GekkePrutser 4y ago
I think email is ever diminishing as a communication medium because it's just so terribly broken. You can't verify the sender is who they say they are, you can't be sure that the recipient receives your message and is the only one to see it. I don't use it for personal communication anymore. With some businesses perhaps but most of that has relegated email to a buggy notification service ("come check our portal for your message") because email can't be trusted with confidential data. It still has an important role in the identity process but that's mainly for historical reasons. It's also grossly unsuited for that and I don't understand why open ID federation like OpenID never took off.

by cglan 4y ago

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

komali2 4y ago
But what's the alternative? Does SMTP even work without a domain? I dipped my toes in this far enough to connect a custom domain to a mailbox hosted by bluehost so I don't know too much but I always seek to separate from Google et al wherever possible. I thought the buck stops at DNS and domain registration though, short of like, that gnu internet project I vaguely remember, what's the alternative?
- thinkloop 4y ago
- csande17 4y ago
  You can theoretically send email to an IP address directly, like someone@[127.0.0.1], but I imagine a lot of the programs and websites you'd want to use don't know that. And you're still left with the problem of needing to get that IP address from someone who can arbitrarily take it away from you.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  > Does SMTP even work without a domain It is, but don't expecting people understand what komali@13.55.66.77 is a perfectly valid address, nor the anti-spam systems or designers of web/mail apps and services.
yuvalr1 4y ago
Sounds bad. Is there anything we can do about it? What is the most reliable domain registrar?
- SXX 4y ago
  So far Gandi was posted as reliable company and over last 10 years I had no issues with them. One good feature is that you dont have to be owner to renew domain name registered with them. So in case you temporary lose access to your account you can still pay for domains. They also allow to keep credit balance for auto renew. I really didnt have much of issues to talk about so no idea how good is their support at solving them, but at least I have peace of mind when it comes to renewal.

cube00 4y ago

Using your own domain also has advantages in terms of being able to use aliases for different websites so (when, not if) an address gets leaked you can > /dev/null it. If you're cheap like me you can give family members their own subdomain so everyone can have aliases for the cost of a single domain. It's sad to think back on myself nearly two decades ago when Gmail first launched as invitation service and I thought I was being smart by not paying for my own domain, little did I know how evil Google would turn out to be in terms of locking people out of their own accounts with no recourse.

arglebargle123 4y ago
Not defending big G here in the slightest but you can do that with Gmail aliases too: Someaddr+alias@gmail resolves to Someaddr@gmail.
- 400thecat 4y ago
  OK, but if the point was to obfuscate your "precious" address and use some other "throwaway" address, then this does not work. Your email address can be easily deconstructed and used for spam
- jasec57322 4y ago
  Most providers now block Gmail addresses containing . or +
  - danaris 4y ago
    This has not been my experience.

jesuscript 4y ago

Go through that exercise of ditching that email. You will find out the 2-3 things you need absolute plan a/b/c for. Seriously, reset your email password to something you can never remember and write it down and have someone hold it for a month (don’t tell them what is it, tuck it in an envelope). Let your mind run circles around your fears and you’ll find out how little that email account owns you. Freezing one credit card will shut off all your frivolous subscriptions (Spotify, Netflix, Prime). You’ll call your internet provider because you don’t want that cut off. You’ll call your bank, brokerage. You’ll remember your bosses contact info, and the one person at work you trust. You’ll let the most important people know (could be as few as one) that you’re off the grid, in your terms. You’ll memorize their number. You’ll realize all the people you could care less about, or they about you, if neither of you ever heard from each other again. Kind of a freeing thing. Then you’ll make a new email, and you’ll never add that much cruft to it ever again.

hilbert42 4y ago
Exactly! Good one. People just don't realize how much of this stuff is just jetsam and dross. What the hell would happen if the service ever seriously failed for long periods or GPS failed overnight (which it easily could)? People would have to resort to what they did pre-internet. Back then, the world still worked (and some would argue even better because the internet 'toy' wasn't around to distract everyone and wreak havoc on the world). Believe it or not, we actually built the modern world without email and the smartphone.
smaudet 4y ago
More applicable TBH with e.g. Facebook, but I generally agree...
lexandstuff 4y ago
Sounds like an insane inconvenience. Sorry, what was the point of doing all this again? Just to prove you can?
- kuramitropolis 4y ago
  Nah, just to prove that you can't.

YeBanKo 4y ago

What email do you use with domain registrar? I ended up switching most if mine domains to google domains simply because i find its ui more convenient for me, all eggs in one basket i guess. But how do you ensure that you aren’t gonna loose access to your domain account?

cube00 4y ago
Given the way Google locks out accounts with no support or appeal I can't think of a worse registrar to use. I use my ISP's email address with my registrar, if they want to keep getting paid each month its in their interests to keep that email address working.
- YeBanKo 4y ago
  At this point some government entity should provide a way to have an inalienable electronic address. There are strong protections for regular mail, that ensure that mail gets delivered. Cell carriers are required to port numbers. Since email addresses are tied to domain, there should be some usps-like service that allows to have an address, that can be related to a provider of your choosing. And this address is tied to your identity, which you can verify by physically visiting usps or dmv if all else fails.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
    No thank you. The government doesn't need even more power over my life.
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    > ensure that mail gets delivered Email is intrinsically an unreliable service, and always has been. It's a "best-effort" service. But at least email is honest about it up-front, and tries to address reliability in the RFCs. Not that Google cares much about RFCs.

dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago

> Who hosts your email matters less With my own domain being hosted by Google Legacy Workspace or whatever they call it, I've been wondering about this, and wondering if there has there any evidence of Google cutting off an entire domain randomly. To deal with that possibility I've been thinking what the easiest and most reliable way of providing a "failover" for my domain's mail is. Has anyone dealt with this successfully?

justsomehnguy 4y ago
Buy Fastmail account (seriously, they should pay us money for advertising them so much). In your DNS/registrar settings add Fastmail as a secondary MX, disable DKIM and SPF. Customize it for your needs (necessary mailboxes/addresses/identities etc). Switch over primary MX to FM (maybe keeping G as a secondary for a week). Somewhat optional, but requires some effort - make G send any incoming email to some address not on your domain. You can buy some temp domain and slap it to FM too, it doesn't matter, except you would have two copies of mails for migration time. After mails start to flow to FM reliably (not from Google) remove G. from MX records completely. At this point you would know if something is wrong if some mail would be routed through G. instead of FM (by receiving them to that forwading address). If everything is okay - remove your G. workplace so it has no chance to mess things up. Before that move your mail from G to FM. If it's only thousands - even connecting Outlook (and maybe Thunderbird?) to both through IMAP and drag and drop mails from one account to another would work. If it's millions... clean up it first. You don't need news on newest sales from 2014. PS I'm not moved out from my Gmail account but I culled things there HARD. I also moved everything worthy (notably - registrars and mail providers) to my personal domain mail addresses. If I lose it - it wouldn't be that painful anymore.
- stavros 4y ago
  > Buy Fastmail account (seriously, they should pay us money for advertising them so much). They do pay us money, that's what the referral fee is.
  - justsomehnguy 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

vietvu 4y ago

Now think about it, what will I do when Google suddendly decide to ban my email? I don't know, my life is fucked.

GekkePrutser 4y ago

I think email is ever diminishing as a communication medium because it's just so terribly broken. You can't verify the sender is who they say they are, you can't be sure that the recipient receives your message and is the only one to see it. I don't use it for personal communication anymore. With some businesses perhaps but most of that has relegated email to a buggy notification service ("come check our portal for your message") because email can't be trusted with confidential data. It still has an important role in the identity process but that's mainly for historical reasons. It's also grossly unsuited for that and I don't understand why open ID federation like OpenID never took off.