3 ms·

For me, it’s control over the domain. I can change providers at a whim. In my preteens I stupidly set up a handful of alternate google accounts for various thin

For me, it’s control over the domain. I can change providers at a whim. In my preteens I stupidly set up a handful of alternate google accounts for various things. They all link back to my personal main account which I have used for much of my life. If Google’s abstract machine learning algorithm ever deems my crimes punishable by extreme pain (seriously, imagine being locked out of paypal, banking, credit cards, loans, contact with businesses, etc. for me it would be my main business point of contact as well), this would be disastrous. I don’t mind about the privacy (I consider email broken anyway), I care about control.

doubled112 3y ago
Control over the domain is 100% my biggest anxiety with mail. I use Outlook with a family account, and they used to allow custom domain aliases. All of my email is addressed to addresses on my domain. It's actually a pretty good value for 4 people. If they ever decide suddenly I'm out or they're out, I'll spin up a mail server somewhere else while I figure out my next move
- TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
  Effective today (November 30), the ability to create new addresses has been disabled. They’ve been working hard to remove features from that capability. I assume it was either more than they could justify based on adoption rates, a nightmare to maintain, or seeing more abuse than they want to manage. My anxieties over email match yours. I used to run my own email server but the entire IP range I was in got blacklisted by Proofpoint, and they were thoroughly uninterested in helping unless I owned the entire IP range and could prove it. The ISP didn’t seem to care, and at the very same time Microsoft added the same range to their lists, which meant I wasn’t able to correspond with an attorney. That was in June and by August I’d moved completely to Fastmail. I haven’t looked back, though I do sometimes miss managing my own email server.
  - doubled112 3y ago
    Ahh yes, I remember them announcing this. I'm not planning on adding new people to my immediate family so I'm OK for now. I've used Fastmail in the past and it was a very good experience. Pricing for four people tipped me towards the MS Family plan.
  - jjav 3y ago
    > My anxieties over email match yours. A solid intermediate solution is to have your own domain and host your own email server for incoming email. Then google/microsoft/yahoo/et.al. will never be able to lock you out of receiving important email. You can still use a third party to relay outgoing email if you're worried about deliverability like in your example. But you'll never get locked out of receiving.
Encrypt-Keeper 3y ago
You can do that without self hosting email though. I use a custom domain with ProtonMail. I could potentially lose access to my emails stored on their servers, but getting my email address back up and running is just a matter of changing a DNS record.
- sodality2 3y ago
  Very true, and I do not self-host my mail for that exact reason!

doubled112 3y ago

Control over the domain is 100% my biggest anxiety with mail. I use Outlook with a family account, and they used to allow custom domain aliases. All of my email is addressed to addresses on my domain. It's actually a pretty good value for 4 people. If they ever decide suddenly I'm out or they're out, I'll spin up a mail server somewhere else while I figure out my next move

TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
Effective today (November 30), the ability to create new addresses has been disabled. They’ve been working hard to remove features from that capability. I assume it was either more than they could justify based on adoption rates, a nightmare to maintain, or seeing more abuse than they want to manage. My anxieties over email match yours. I used to run my own email server but the entire IP range I was in got blacklisted by Proofpoint, and they were thoroughly uninterested in helping unless I owned the entire IP range and could prove it. The ISP didn’t seem to care, and at the very same time Microsoft added the same range to their lists, which meant I wasn’t able to correspond with an attorney. That was in June and by August I’d moved completely to Fastmail. I haven’t looked back, though I do sometimes miss managing my own email server.
- doubled112 3y ago
  Ahh yes, I remember them announcing this. I'm not planning on adding new people to my immediate family so I'm OK for now. I've used Fastmail in the past and it was a very good experience. Pricing for four people tipped me towards the MS Family plan.
- jjav 3y ago
  > My anxieties over email match yours. A solid intermediate solution is to have your own domain and host your own email server for incoming email. Then google/microsoft/yahoo/et.al. will never be able to lock you out of receiving important email. You can still use a third party to relay outgoing email if you're worried about deliverability like in your example. But you'll never get locked out of receiving.

Encrypt-Keeper 3y ago

You can do that without self hosting email though. I use a custom domain with ProtonMail. I could potentially lose access to my emails stored on their servers, but getting my email address back up and running is just a matter of changing a DNS record.

sodality2 3y ago
Very true, and I do not self-host my mail for that exact reason!