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Okay, so it's not very likely. What made me transition away from Google/Gmail as my identity provider was pondering the question: How screwed am I if I get lo

by sshine 4y ago

Okay, so it's not very likely. What made me transition away from Google/Gmail as my identity provider was pondering the question: How screwed am I if I get locked out of my Google account? The answer: Well, if you're on Hacker News, you may have a chance of reaching a human. But if you broke a policy, good luck. I'm paying $5/mo. for that to not be that screwed. (I have family who got locked out. It does happen.)

AnotherGoodName 4y ago
Hackernews made me realize manual recovery should never be a thing. My first account was taken over by a scammer even with a unique password. I suspect the admins of this site 'manually recovered' my account and gave it to them. The last message of my first account, areallygoodname, is spam. I couldn't be bothered getting the admins to recover it back. I just took the lesson that hackernews is really insecure due to allowing manual recovery.
- ghaff 4y ago
  At the end of the day, you either have onerous procedures to recover an account--notarized signatures and the like--or you just don't allow it at all. Or there's always going to be some susceptibility to sophisticated social engineering.
column 4y ago
I'm not sure I understand.. where do you pay $5/mo for a service similar to Gmail? Or do you mean you have a paid Google account with extra storage?
- fortytw2 4y ago
  Fastmail!
- fullstop 4y ago
  Fastmail is $5/mo as is ProtonMail.
- brewdad 4y ago
  I'm paying $10 a year for https://purelymail.com https://purelymail.com. Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's a hit-by-a-bus factor at play here that could bite me but the one time I had an issue it was resolved within 8 hours with a follow-up to make sure the uptime they were seeing was also my experience. If the bus ever does meet my provider, I can move providers within a day. For my personal email, that is more than sufficient.
karteum 4y ago
> I'm paying $5/mo. for that to not be that screwed (I have family who got locked out. It does happen.) But the article precisely addresses that: For example, in HN discussions people will often recommend Fastmail or Protonmail, but they've had their problems too (FM: 2017, 2020, 2022, PM: 2018, 2019, 2021). Especially given that these are much smaller services I'm not convinced that the risk is lower there. Any system is going to have to handle this sort of problem, and you're not going to find one that never has false positives. What I'd like to know is : do FM/PM more easily enable to talk to a human ?
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  I submitted a support request to FastMail about passkeys not working properly (enrollment failure) for 2FA and had a human response in under 15 min on a weekend.
- mtlynch 4y ago
  I'm a Fastmail customer, and it's pretty easy to talk to a human. They don't always fix my issue quickly, but I can at least get a hold of a human within 24 hours.
- cameronh90 4y ago
  Talking to a human doesn't necessarily make anything any easier. Lots of large companies have a bunch of customer support agents who are easy to get in touch with, but entirely powerless to solve these sorts of problems: "Computer says no". They are just, to be blunt, executing flowcharts, and have no scope to escalate beyond that. The only reliable ways to get decent customer support are, in my experience: - The CEO is a friend of yours - Your account is so large that a significant chunk of the company depends on you for their income - You have an ironclad support contract - Regulatory requirements enforce a level of customer service Unfortunately, none of those are likely to apply to an average person looking for an email provider, and running one is usually impractical due to these large companies blocking small hosts. Next best thing is taking regular backups and having your own domain with a low TTL MX record.
  - ghaff 4y ago
Wildgoose 4y ago
That's the same calculation I made. It doesn't make sense to have all of your eggs in a single basket.

by sshine 4y ago

AnotherGoodName 4y ago

Hackernews made me realize manual recovery should never be a thing. My first account was taken over by a scammer even with a unique password. I suspect the admins of this site 'manually recovered' my account and gave it to them. The last message of my first account, areallygoodname, is spam. I couldn't be bothered getting the admins to recover it back. I just took the lesson that hackernews is really insecure due to allowing manual recovery.

ghaff 4y ago
At the end of the day, you either have onerous procedures to recover an account--notarized signatures and the like--or you just don't allow it at all. Or there's always going to be some susceptibility to sophisticated social engineering.

column 4y ago

I'm not sure I understand.. where do you pay $5/mo for a service similar to Gmail? Or do you mean you have a paid Google account with extra storage?

fortytw2 4y ago
Fastmail!
fullstop 4y ago
Fastmail is $5/mo as is ProtonMail.
brewdad 4y ago
I'm paying $10 a year for https://purelymail.com https://purelymail.com. Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's a hit-by-a-bus factor at play here that could bite me but the one time I had an issue it was resolved within 8 hours with a follow-up to make sure the uptime they were seeing was also my experience. If the bus ever does meet my provider, I can move providers within a day. For my personal email, that is more than sufficient.

karteum 4y ago

> I'm paying $5/mo. for that to not be that screwed (I have family who got locked out. It does happen.) But the article precisely addresses that: For example, in HN discussions people will often recommend Fastmail or Protonmail, but they've had their problems too (FM: 2017, 2020, 2022, PM: 2018, 2019, 2021). Especially given that these are much smaller services I'm not convinced that the risk is lower there. Any system is going to have to handle this sort of problem, and you're not going to find one that never has false positives. What I'd like to know is : do FM/PM more easily enable to talk to a human ?

toomuchtodo 4y ago
I submitted a support request to FastMail about passkeys not working properly (enrollment failure) for 2FA and had a human response in under 15 min on a weekend.
mtlynch 4y ago
I'm a Fastmail customer, and it's pretty easy to talk to a human. They don't always fix my issue quickly, but I can at least get a hold of a human within 24 hours.
cameronh90 4y ago
Talking to a human doesn't necessarily make anything any easier. Lots of large companies have a bunch of customer support agents who are easy to get in touch with, but entirely powerless to solve these sorts of problems: "Computer says no". They are just, to be blunt, executing flowcharts, and have no scope to escalate beyond that. The only reliable ways to get decent customer support are, in my experience: - The CEO is a friend of yours - Your account is so large that a significant chunk of the company depends on you for their income - You have an ironclad support contract - Regulatory requirements enforce a level of customer service Unfortunately, none of those are likely to apply to an average person looking for an email provider, and running one is usually impractical due to these large companies blocking small hosts. Next best thing is taking regular backups and having your own domain with a low TTL MX record.
- ghaff 4y ago

Wildgoose 4y ago

That's the same calculation I made. It doesn't make sense to have all of your eggs in a single basket.