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How topical. My wife and I were having a freak out this morning about how vulnerable we are to having our lives choked out at Google's whims. They have no custo

How topical. My wife and I were having a freak out this morning about how vulnerable we are to having our lives choked out at Google's whims. They have no customer service, and delegate more and more to "AI" to manage these things. This has all been giving me anxiety since the time I had my Facebook account partially locked for over a month because I shared a picture of my son at the beach with no shirt on and their "AI" couldn't tell the difference between him and a girl because he has long hair and somehow concluded I was sharing explicit imagery. When I appealed, they extended my lock. I worked @ Google for 10 years and still wouldn't trust them even though I could possibly find someone on the inside to ring some bells for me (questionable). I backed up all my photos recently and am trying to figure out what to do about email.

squirrel 3y ago
Google Takeout will give you an archive of your email (and everything else).
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Yes I've done that recently, too. But it's really something that needs to be done periodically. By "figure out about email" I meant: where to move my email & whole life to. I'm thinking about registering a domain and taking up residence on another email hosting provider that lets me use my own domain. I have started self-hosting my own photos on my own local NAS running Immich, with limited, controlled exposure via tailscale for when I'm out.
  - whitehexagon 3y ago
    I switched to hetzner hosted 'own domain' a few weeks ago, which includes webmail (I use thunderbird client). YouTube failed to delete, even though I'd deleted all content a couple years back, but deleting the complete google account worked! (and feels great!) Funny thing was that I was then blocked from sending email to other gmail accounts. Turns out there are a couple simple switches in the hetzner web interface to enable some of the anti-spam measures these big tech receivers require.
codazoda 3y ago
I don’t know if it will save me but I purchase a domain of my own, use an email address from that domain, and forward to Gmail. I could easily forward to any other service. When Google locks me out of my account I’ll see how resilient this idea is. Obviously I’ll lose the ability to search my decades of email, which will sting a little.

squirrel 3y ago

Google Takeout will give you an archive of your email (and everything else).

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Yes I've done that recently, too. But it's really something that needs to be done periodically. By "figure out about email" I meant: where to move my email & whole life to. I'm thinking about registering a domain and taking up residence on another email hosting provider that lets me use my own domain. I have started self-hosting my own photos on my own local NAS running Immich, with limited, controlled exposure via tailscale for when I'm out.
- whitehexagon 3y ago
  I switched to hetzner hosted 'own domain' a few weeks ago, which includes webmail (I use thunderbird client). YouTube failed to delete, even though I'd deleted all content a couple years back, but deleting the complete google account worked! (and feels great!) Funny thing was that I was then blocked from sending email to other gmail accounts. Turns out there are a couple simple switches in the hetzner web interface to enable some of the anti-spam measures these big tech receivers require.

codazoda 3y ago

I don’t know if it will save me but I purchase a domain of my own, use an email address from that domain, and forward to Gmail. I could easily forward to any other service. When Google locks me out of my account I’ll see how resilient this idea is. Obviously I’ll lose the ability to search my decades of email, which will sting a little.