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I strongly disagree. - Google has on multiple occasions terminated accounts for no reason with no recourse. You loose access you can't do anything. If you have

I strongly disagree. - Google has on multiple occasions terminated accounts for no reason with no recourse. You loose access you can't do anything. If you have your own domain you can at least set it up somewhere else. How many website would you need to update with your new email and how would you get thay extra factor mail? - If I die I don't care if someone else reads my mail, I'm dead. Also you can add a dead man's switch and you should provide your family with access to your passwords etc. in case something does happen. - if you are worried about expiration, didn't one registrar just offer 100 year registration? Also the process is usually (for. com at least): domain expires, registrar removes DNS until you pay, usually 30 days, then the domain goes to retention where you can pay the +250 fee to get it back which I believe is another 60 days or something that you have to pay and get it back. I have had customers that I would remind over and over only to have them fall into retention and then complain about the fee but they got their domain back.

EduardoBautista 3y ago
I didn't recommend an email host on purpose because that's not the point I was trying to make. I recommend iCloud since it's the cheapest paid email provider you can get if you have or had any Apple device. Fastmail is a close second.
- EwanToo 3y ago
  Unfortunately if you stop paying for fastmail or your Google account becomes inactive, they terminate your account and the email address becomes available for a new user. I think the concern that your email address is subject to takeover is valid, but unfortunately relying on generic domains isn't the solution. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12418290?hl=en https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12418290?hl=en
  - gmail_temp 3y ago
    Citing from Google‘s recent email on account inactivity: ”After a Google Account is deleted, the Gmail address for the deleted account cannot be used again when creating a new Google Account“
    - EwanToo 3y ago
      That's good to know, though I'm skeptical for the future and it doesn't appear to be in the policy itself from my read through. They'll have to tackle email exhaustion eventually, and so far they don't seem interested in add new alternative domains.
    - foresterre 3y ago
      For Fastmail, I could not quickly find their policy. However, I do occasionally receive some emails on my fastmail user address which are not my own, which may indicate that Fastmail user addresses become available after unsubscribing. The emails are from Steam, with 2FA login codes; I assume they only send those with prior email verification. With only the email address it is apparently not possible to contact Steam and tell them this is not my account (you need to login to contact support, or know a username). The danger here is that many websites (not just Steam) assume an email address is "forever", and the same address can not be used by anybody else.
      - ncruces 3y ago
        I regularly receive emails sent to a person that enjoys using my email to subscribe to spam. I've also received stuff from another that used it for school and even their bank account. And if you think verification does it, someone used their phone number and my email to register to Uber. I'd receive all their invoices and stuff. I couldn't log in because that needed phone verification. And it took quite a few rounds of Uber tech support to get them to remove my email.
      - anon____ 3y ago
        Unfortunately, Fastmail addresses are re-used "after a few weeks" the subscription ends. I lost mine like this. https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000279581-Expired-subscriptions https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000279581-Ex...
      - climb_stealth 3y ago
        Fastmail allows to reuse the email when an account is closed. Just before looking this up I tended to be very strongly pro fastmail. Have been using them for years as well. Now I'm not so sure anymore. Because reusing email addresses is quite sketchy :/ > Once an account has been deleted, the username and any addresses on the account can be re-used. https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277342-Canceling-and-deleting-accounts https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277342-Ca...
- jacooper 3y ago
  Skiff free tier includes custom domains
- Gareth321 3y ago
  I agree. iCloud isn’t great but it does the basics fine. It’s a big step down from Google but WELL worth the peace of mind. A few nice privacy features like Hide my Email and Privacy Relay (kind of like a VPN). Plus if you’re using Apple devices it integrates very nicely and makes full device backups quite seamless.
luguenth 3y ago
About not being worried, that someone could read your mail in the case you're dead: Always bear in mind you're not writing mails to yourself. The other party writing mails with you, might not be that happy with third parties reading their mails. Privacy is not only about you
- theshrike79 3y ago
  I'm still sad because PGP/GPG couldn't make the UX work for signing and encrypting emails 20 years ago. It's still a huge pain to do, even if you're a hobbyist like me. Encryption/decryption should've been a standard thing everyone does transparently when sending emails with one recipient. Multi-recipient mails should always be signed, automatically. Maybe some day.
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    IMO, GPG for email was mostly a mistake, because email can't be secured enough. GPG leaves all the headers exposed, and reveals who's talking to whom. That, right there, is a huge security problem. Turns out metadata is often plenty. And it can't even encrypt the subject, which is a footgun of enormous proportions. Picture a high stakes situation like say, a resistance member in the Russian occupied parts of Ukraine. Yeah, the Russians can't see what you're emailing about, but they can see that 3 people of a given village are sending encrypted messages to each other, and then there's some outside contacts. Gee, what might they be talking about? What conclusions should we make if somebody else also sends mail to this outside contact. Yeah, the encryption might be strong, but it won't do much to protect those people against the $5 wrench. GPG for email only works in extremely narrow scenarios, and that makes it a bad tool.
    - theshrike79 3y ago
      Which communication methods leak no metadata? If two people are communicating, the message always needs to know where it's going and in most cases where it's coming from. Not encrypting the email subject is an implementation detail really.
ralferoo 3y ago
It was Wordpress that offered the 100 year thing, but I think that was more publicity stunt than practical service - it was cheaper than their offerings for companies, so clearly aimed at individuals, but few people would care about their "personal brand" blog for so long after their death, and those that would probably have an estate big enough that they have a company running it while they're alive. But in any case, AFAIK the maximum registration period for ICANN domains is 10-years into the future. I keep my personal domain re-registered at least 5 years into the future, specifically so that if I was incapacitated for a year, or randomly decided to go travelling for half a year, or whatever, I won't miss the expiry date. I've had this domain for over 20 years already, so I don't mind 5 years extra, because I know I'm keeping it. Basically, everything the article said. The domains for my company are all registered for 3 years up-front, and I try to renew them annually to keep at least 2 years before expiry, but I also know that if I died, someone else would either take over or wind up the company, and in either case they can deal with the domains as part of that, and if they have a long grace period, that's fine. And in terms of the privacy concerns of the article, I have several separate domains that I use when dealing with companies. For a long time, I used addresses based on my main domain name with the company name before the @, but I'd already blocked a load of addresses where the company sold their client list (even some quite random companies like recruitment agencies seem to get tempted by this) and decided to just move to a couple of domains solely for this purpose. They have no obvious relationship to my name, so they're perfect if the e-mail address was later sold on. To be honest, the biggest issue with dying isn't the registration of my domain names, it's that nobody else would even know HOW to get my e-mail from my private server. Currently, that's less of a problem than it might be as I use gmail as a client, so it fetches using POP from the various accounts on my servers, but if I died and nobody could access my gmail, it'd be a bit harder. That said, in the UK after you die, the executor of your will has legal authority to contact any company you had dealings with before and take over your account or affairs. So honestly, as long as I document my bank account numbers, and make my property deeds and will easily discoverable, I'm not really too bothered about anything else.
a254613e 3y ago
Even if there is no option for 100 year registration, 10 years is pretty common[0]. Google deactivates an account and deletes all data after 2 years of inactivity[1]. So even if someone stops using the domain, all data would be deleted after 2 years, emails sent to it would bounce for ~8 years, and only then could someone take ownership of the domain. Even if you're using another paid service, your payments would fail, and your account would also be deleted before your domain expires. 0: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/renew-domain-name-2018-12-07-en https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/renew-domain-name-2018... 1: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12418290 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12418290
- murkle 3y ago
  ... and if you die when your domain has one year left?
  - pertique 3y ago
    10 years is just the maximum time a domain can be registered at a given time. You can keep adding a year for every year that passes if you'd like.
sshine 3y ago
The day I worried "What if Google just shuts down my email account with no recourse?" is the day I started migrating my authentication to my own domain email address. Choosing a registrar with proper security in place, this is probably the safest while you are alive.
- Gareth321 3y ago
  I’ve read so many accounts of users and whole companies being permanently shut out of their Google accounts that I couldn’t justify the risk any longer. Google genuinely does not care. The number of critical services which rely on our email address is really difficult to grasp until one goes through the exercise of converting to their own domain. Banks. Trading platforms. Phones and computers. Windows. Game consoles. Steam. Google (Maps, YouTube). Cloud storage. Social media. Business applications. Communications like WhatsApp and Teams. Thousands more forums and services you’ve signed up with over the decades. As more services utilise 2FA, all of those are at risk without access to the email account. Even if you can log in, good luck changing settings, passwords, or the email address. Everyone should buy and use their own domain. Losing access to Gmail is catastrophic. We’re talking hundreds of hours of effort and permanently lost access to irretrievable data, services, contacts, correspondence, one’s digital identity, and even money.
  - HeckFeck 3y ago
    For corporate use, only choose an email provider that has real people at a manned help desk. Google's abysmally opaque support is much too risky for serious business operations. It is a right blighter if you lose your personal YouTube account with all its carefully curated meme playlists, but at least you aren't missing out on vital business communications.
    - celeritascelery 3y ago
      I used to use YouTube Red and had a playlist of BGM that i would work to on YouTube. Then one day about 20% of the video’s disappeared due to DMCA takedowns. That was the day canceled my subscription and switched to getting everything I care about with yt-dlp.
ghusto 3y ago
> Also you can add a dead man's switch This is something I've struggled to find a solution for. Do you have any suggestions? The best I've come up with is a safe with enough information to provide access to my password manager, but obviously this makes me pretty uncomfortable. I could hand it over to a lawyer as part of my will, maybe?
- bboygravity 3y ago
  Bitwarden has this feature
- buildfocus 3y ago
  Bitwarden has built in emergency access: https://bitwarden.com/help/emergency-access/ https://bitwarden.com/help/emergency-access/ That coves these kinds of cases reasonably imo: you can invite somebody, and then that person can later request access when that's necessary. That sends you a notification, and they're granted access if you don't object within a preconfigured time window. Obviously there's some trust required and/or a sufficiently long window, but it's one of the better solutions I've seen.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mikecoles 3y ago
  Avoid Liberty Safes when selecting your safe. https://www.locksmithledger.com/safes/news/53071785/liberty-safe-facing-backlash-over-giving-reset-code-to-fbi https://www.locksmithledger.com/safes/news/53071785/liberty-...
nurettin 3y ago
> If I die I don't care if someone else reads my mail, I'm dead. Mom, why did grandfather let others take over his online bank account and send his inheritance money overseas? He just didn't care, honey. He was a good man, but he simply did not care.
- bruce343434 3y ago
  I think that scenario requires someone registering the domain and hijacking the identity a few days after death? Quite unlikely it seems.
  - mingus88 3y ago
    My mother in law’s bank account was drained within a week of her passing. Evidently someone at the hospital had to have been involved, although we never learned the vector. It’s really not a stretch to imagine a sophisticated attacker who specializes in identity theft paying off hospital staff for access to dead patient’s info, even phones. It’s the last thing on the families minds. We already know that insiders at cell providers are working with SIM swappers to compromise SMS verification. Why is it unlikely for hospital staff to do the same?
    - danillonunes 3y ago
      That's a very specific and small target to aim. Your victim not only has to use an email with their own domain, but they also need to have their domain expire at about the same time as they die. Wait too long and the family already had access to the bank through traditional means.
- westernpopular 3y ago
  If getting access to your email is all it takes for someone to empty your bank account, you need to find a different bank.
tjpnz 3y ago
As evidenced here the impact of account terminations can have a profound impact on a persons life. Email providers like Google should be treated as utilities and regulated as such, they should be legally obligated to communicate with their users, ideally working towards a resolution. Until then you really should be treating said accounts in the same way you would a hotel rental phone.
- bbor 3y ago
  Would you be open to the nationalization of email services? Curious if your very HN-friendly sentiment also implies agreement with this very HN-unfriendly extension.
  - tjpnz 3y ago
    Irrelevant. If my privately owned utility screws up they're still obliged to follow the law.
  - kwanbix 3y ago
    What nationalization has to do with what he said? They need to be regulated. It is outrageous that they can say "you violated our policies" and do not explain which policy and how.
  - piaste 3y ago
    There's little need to nationalize, since emails don't have a last-mile or natural monopoly issue. I think, however, that modern countries should provide all citizens with an official, public, mail address. Restrict them to only send/receive emails to/from a whitelist of publicly registered service providers with very strict personal data governance requirements (government, banks, utilities, medical services, higher education). You can let private companies continue to offer email addresses for everything else, anonymously and under whatever terms. (Much like how you can still buy a mailbox if you want, but you're always guaranteed to receive the mail at your address.) Just ensure that people aren't cut off from essential services.
    - 3y ago
Aardwolf 3y ago
With an email service, your account can be terminated there. With a registrar, your account or domain could be terminated as well. So both have similar risk, so best strategy is to spread the risk and have multiple accounts of different types.
- flagged24 3y ago
  The thing is, my domain registrar can be contacted by phone. They have a support desk. Google will give you the cold shoulder when you are flagged by their AI system unless you can create an outcry on social media.
- edwinjm 3y ago
  A registrar terminating an account is very rare. If you stay away from dubious domain names (like disneyfanshop.com) and stay away from tld's from dubious countries, you're pretty safe.
- remram 3y ago
  Your account being terminated with a registrar usually doesn't mean that you lose the domain. You have to find a new provider, and there might be some interruption of service while you do, but then your addresses will resume working. If your Google account is closed, your Gmail address is lost to you forever.
haneul 3y ago
I tried to log into the “Ethereum” Minecraft account after many years of hiatus and discovered that I didn’t remember the password, and the associated gmail had somehow been deleted. I now use my own domain name for email.

EduardoBautista 3y ago

I didn't recommend an email host on purpose because that's not the point I was trying to make. I recommend iCloud since it's the cheapest paid email provider you can get if you have or had any Apple device. Fastmail is a close second.

EwanToo 3y ago
Unfortunately if you stop paying for fastmail or your Google account becomes inactive, they terminate your account and the email address becomes available for a new user. I think the concern that your email address is subject to takeover is valid, but unfortunately relying on generic domains isn't the solution. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12418290?hl=en https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12418290?hl=en
- gmail_temp 3y ago
  Citing from Google‘s recent email on account inactivity: ”After a Google Account is deleted, the Gmail address for the deleted account cannot be used again when creating a new Google Account“
  - EwanToo 3y ago
    That's good to know, though I'm skeptical for the future and it doesn't appear to be in the policy itself from my read through. They'll have to tackle email exhaustion eventually, and so far they don't seem interested in add new alternative domains.
  - foresterre 3y ago
    For Fastmail, I could not quickly find their policy. However, I do occasionally receive some emails on my fastmail user address which are not my own, which may indicate that Fastmail user addresses become available after unsubscribing. The emails are from Steam, with 2FA login codes; I assume they only send those with prior email verification. With only the email address it is apparently not possible to contact Steam and tell them this is not my account (you need to login to contact support, or know a username). The danger here is that many websites (not just Steam) assume an email address is "forever", and the same address can not be used by anybody else.
    - ncruces 3y ago
      I regularly receive emails sent to a person that enjoys using my email to subscribe to spam. I've also received stuff from another that used it for school and even their bank account. And if you think verification does it, someone used their phone number and my email to register to Uber. I'd receive all their invoices and stuff. I couldn't log in because that needed phone verification. And it took quite a few rounds of Uber tech support to get them to remove my email.
    - anon____ 3y ago
      Unfortunately, Fastmail addresses are re-used "after a few weeks" the subscription ends. I lost mine like this. https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000279581-Expired-subscriptions https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000279581-Ex...
    - climb_stealth 3y ago
      Fastmail allows to reuse the email when an account is closed. Just before looking this up I tended to be very strongly pro fastmail. Have been using them for years as well. Now I'm not so sure anymore. Because reusing email addresses is quite sketchy :/ > Once an account has been deleted, the username and any addresses on the account can be re-used. https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277342-Canceling-and-deleting-accounts https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277342-Ca...
jacooper 3y ago
Skiff free tier includes custom domains
Gareth321 3y ago
I agree. iCloud isn’t great but it does the basics fine. It’s a big step down from Google but WELL worth the peace of mind. A few nice privacy features like Hide my Email and Privacy Relay (kind of like a VPN). Plus if you’re using Apple devices it integrates very nicely and makes full device backups quite seamless.

luguenth 3y ago

About not being worried, that someone could read your mail in the case you're dead: Always bear in mind you're not writing mails to yourself. The other party writing mails with you, might not be that happy with third parties reading their mails. Privacy is not only about you

theshrike79 3y ago
I'm still sad because PGP/GPG couldn't make the UX work for signing and encrypting emails 20 years ago. It's still a huge pain to do, even if you're a hobbyist like me. Encryption/decryption should've been a standard thing everyone does transparently when sending emails with one recipient. Multi-recipient mails should always be signed, automatically. Maybe some day.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  IMO, GPG for email was mostly a mistake, because email can't be secured enough. GPG leaves all the headers exposed, and reveals who's talking to whom. That, right there, is a huge security problem. Turns out metadata is often plenty. And it can't even encrypt the subject, which is a footgun of enormous proportions. Picture a high stakes situation like say, a resistance member in the Russian occupied parts of Ukraine. Yeah, the Russians can't see what you're emailing about, but they can see that 3 people of a given village are sending encrypted messages to each other, and then there's some outside contacts. Gee, what might they be talking about? What conclusions should we make if somebody else also sends mail to this outside contact. Yeah, the encryption might be strong, but it won't do much to protect those people against the $5 wrench. GPG for email only works in extremely narrow scenarios, and that makes it a bad tool.
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    Which communication methods leak no metadata? If two people are communicating, the message always needs to know where it's going and in most cases where it's coming from. Not encrypting the email subject is an implementation detail really.

ralferoo 3y ago

It was Wordpress that offered the 100 year thing, but I think that was more publicity stunt than practical service - it was cheaper than their offerings for companies, so clearly aimed at individuals, but few people would care about their "personal brand" blog for so long after their death, and those that would probably have an estate big enough that they have a company running it while they're alive. But in any case, AFAIK the maximum registration period for ICANN domains is 10-years into the future. I keep my personal domain re-registered at least 5 years into the future, specifically so that if I was incapacitated for a year, or randomly decided to go travelling for half a year, or whatever, I won't miss the expiry date. I've had this domain for over 20 years already, so I don't mind 5 years extra, because I know I'm keeping it. Basically, everything the article said. The domains for my company are all registered for 3 years up-front, and I try to renew them annually to keep at least 2 years before expiry, but I also know that if I died, someone else would either take over or wind up the company, and in either case they can deal with the domains as part of that, and if they have a long grace period, that's fine. And in terms of the privacy concerns of the article, I have several separate domains that I use when dealing with companies. For a long time, I used addresses based on my main domain name with the company name before the @, but I'd already blocked a load of addresses where the company sold their client list (even some quite random companies like recruitment agencies seem to get tempted by this) and decided to just move to a couple of domains solely for this purpose. They have no obvious relationship to my name, so they're perfect if the e-mail address was later sold on. To be honest, the biggest issue with dying isn't the registration of my domain names, it's that nobody else would even know HOW to get my e-mail from my private server. Currently, that's less of a problem than it might be as I use gmail as a client, so it fetches using POP from the various accounts on my servers, but if I died and nobody could access my gmail, it'd be a bit harder. That said, in the UK after you die, the executor of your will has legal authority to contact any company you had dealings with before and take over your account or affairs. So honestly, as long as I document my bank account numbers, and make my property deeds and will easily discoverable, I'm not really too bothered about anything else.

a254613e 3y ago

Even if there is no option for 100 year registration, 10 years is pretty common[0]. Google deactivates an account and deletes all data after 2 years of inactivity[1]. So even if someone stops using the domain, all data would be deleted after 2 years, emails sent to it would bounce for ~8 years, and only then could someone take ownership of the domain. Even if you're using another paid service, your payments would fail, and your account would also be deleted before your domain expires. 0: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/renew-domain-name-2018-12-07-en https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/renew-domain-name-2018... 1: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12418290 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12418290

murkle 3y ago
... and if you die when your domain has one year left?
- pertique 3y ago
  10 years is just the maximum time a domain can be registered at a given time. You can keep adding a year for every year that passes if you'd like.

sshine 3y ago

The day I worried "What if Google just shuts down my email account with no recourse?" is the day I started migrating my authentication to my own domain email address. Choosing a registrar with proper security in place, this is probably the safest while you are alive.

Gareth321 3y ago
I’ve read so many accounts of users and whole companies being permanently shut out of their Google accounts that I couldn’t justify the risk any longer. Google genuinely does not care. The number of critical services which rely on our email address is really difficult to grasp until one goes through the exercise of converting to their own domain. Banks. Trading platforms. Phones and computers. Windows. Game consoles. Steam. Google (Maps, YouTube). Cloud storage. Social media. Business applications. Communications like WhatsApp and Teams. Thousands more forums and services you’ve signed up with over the decades. As more services utilise 2FA, all of those are at risk without access to the email account. Even if you can log in, good luck changing settings, passwords, or the email address. Everyone should buy and use their own domain. Losing access to Gmail is catastrophic. We’re talking hundreds of hours of effort and permanently lost access to irretrievable data, services, contacts, correspondence, one’s digital identity, and even money.
- HeckFeck 3y ago
  For corporate use, only choose an email provider that has real people at a manned help desk. Google's abysmally opaque support is much too risky for serious business operations. It is a right blighter if you lose your personal YouTube account with all its carefully curated meme playlists, but at least you aren't missing out on vital business communications.
  - celeritascelery 3y ago
    I used to use YouTube Red and had a playlist of BGM that i would work to on YouTube. Then one day about 20% of the video’s disappeared due to DMCA takedowns. That was the day canceled my subscription and switched to getting everything I care about with yt-dlp.

ghusto 3y ago

> Also you can add a dead man's switch This is something I've struggled to find a solution for. Do you have any suggestions? The best I've come up with is a safe with enough information to provide access to my password manager, but obviously this makes me pretty uncomfortable. I could hand it over to a lawyer as part of my will, maybe?

bboygravity 3y ago
Bitwarden has this feature
buildfocus 3y ago
Bitwarden has built in emergency access: https://bitwarden.com/help/emergency-access/ https://bitwarden.com/help/emergency-access/ That coves these kinds of cases reasonably imo: you can invite somebody, and then that person can later request access when that's necessary. That sends you a notification, and they're granted access if you don't object within a preconfigured time window. Obviously there's some trust required and/or a sufficiently long window, but it's one of the better solutions I've seen.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mikecoles 3y ago
Avoid Liberty Safes when selecting your safe. https://www.locksmithledger.com/safes/news/53071785/liberty-safe-facing-backlash-over-giving-reset-code-to-fbi https://www.locksmithledger.com/safes/news/53071785/liberty-...

nurettin 3y ago

> If I die I don't care if someone else reads my mail, I'm dead. Mom, why did grandfather let others take over his online bank account and send his inheritance money overseas? He just didn't care, honey. He was a good man, but he simply did not care.

bruce343434 3y ago
I think that scenario requires someone registering the domain and hijacking the identity a few days after death? Quite unlikely it seems.
- mingus88 3y ago
  My mother in law’s bank account was drained within a week of her passing. Evidently someone at the hospital had to have been involved, although we never learned the vector. It’s really not a stretch to imagine a sophisticated attacker who specializes in identity theft paying off hospital staff for access to dead patient’s info, even phones. It’s the last thing on the families minds. We already know that insiders at cell providers are working with SIM swappers to compromise SMS verification. Why is it unlikely for hospital staff to do the same?
  - danillonunes 3y ago
    That's a very specific and small target to aim. Your victim not only has to use an email with their own domain, but they also need to have their domain expire at about the same time as they die. Wait too long and the family already had access to the bank through traditional means.
westernpopular 3y ago
If getting access to your email is all it takes for someone to empty your bank account, you need to find a different bank.

tjpnz 3y ago

As evidenced here the impact of account terminations can have a profound impact on a persons life. Email providers like Google should be treated as utilities and regulated as such, they should be legally obligated to communicate with their users, ideally working towards a resolution. Until then you really should be treating said accounts in the same way you would a hotel rental phone.

bbor 3y ago
Would you be open to the nationalization of email services? Curious if your very HN-friendly sentiment also implies agreement with this very HN-unfriendly extension.
- tjpnz 3y ago
  Irrelevant. If my privately owned utility screws up they're still obliged to follow the law.
- kwanbix 3y ago
  What nationalization has to do with what he said? They need to be regulated. It is outrageous that they can say "you violated our policies" and do not explain which policy and how.
- piaste 3y ago
  There's little need to nationalize, since emails don't have a last-mile or natural monopoly issue. I think, however, that modern countries should provide all citizens with an official, public, mail address. Restrict them to only send/receive emails to/from a whitelist of publicly registered service providers with very strict personal data governance requirements (government, banks, utilities, medical services, higher education). You can let private companies continue to offer email addresses for everything else, anonymously and under whatever terms. (Much like how you can still buy a mailbox if you want, but you're always guaranteed to receive the mail at your address.) Just ensure that people aren't cut off from essential services.
  - 3y ago

Aardwolf 3y ago

With an email service, your account can be terminated there. With a registrar, your account or domain could be terminated as well. So both have similar risk, so best strategy is to spread the risk and have multiple accounts of different types.

flagged24 3y ago
The thing is, my domain registrar can be contacted by phone. They have a support desk. Google will give you the cold shoulder when you are flagged by their AI system unless you can create an outcry on social media.
edwinjm 3y ago
A registrar terminating an account is very rare. If you stay away from dubious domain names (like disneyfanshop.com) and stay away from tld's from dubious countries, you're pretty safe.
remram 3y ago
Your account being terminated with a registrar usually doesn't mean that you lose the domain. You have to find a new provider, and there might be some interruption of service while you do, but then your addresses will resume working. If your Google account is closed, your Gmail address is lost to you forever.

haneul 3y ago

I tried to log into the “Ethereum” Minecraft account after many years of hiatus and discovered that I didn’t remember the password, and the associated gmail had somehow been deleted. I now use my own domain name for email.