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> I don't think people want to change email addresses very often. You probably know this already, but people should have their own domain. Then they can change
by palata 2y ago
> I don't think people want to change email addresses very often.
You probably know this already, but people should have their own domain. Then they can change provider without changing the address.
- Mistletoe 2y agoThe average person is not intelligent enough to have their own domain.
- eikenberry 2y agoSounds like a business opportunity.
- 999900000999 2y agoOr they have better things to do vs fighting Route53 MX records errors.
- yakireev 2y agoRecords, shmekords. The practical experience of having your own domain for your email is that you delegate your domain to Google / Fastmail / Proton / whatever, and it takes care of everything else. Some webmail providers will also let you buy a domain on their own website as a part of registration flow. It really is not hard. Harder than not having a domain of your own, but not as hard as you make it sound.
- 999900000999 2y agoOkay, do you think if we just picked some random person they would have any idea what we're talking about? It's just not something normal people do, but I don't like the snarkiness of implying that's an indicator of intelligence. Otherwise we go down the no true Scotsman rabbit hole, what do you mean you're using Proton. You didn't set up your own mail server ? What do you mean you're using AWS, your not using a solar powered raspberry pi?
- Retric 2y agoRandom people don’t know how to do most things, but how easy it is to follow the directions is what matters here not knowing all the individual steps.
- xp84 2y agoEven following all the directions is not trivial, nor is it easy to troubleshoot when something mysteriously goes wrong with what is usually a pretty vital connecting piece for most of your digital life. Plus all the good places to host your personal domain cost money, so now people who have gotten email for 'free' for 20+ years now have to start paying a monthly email hosting bill and annual domain registration fee because some 'nerd' told them they "should"? And if they ever forget to pay either one, suddenly their email is down and their email 'identity' is at risk of being resold. This advice is exactly like changing your own oil: Anyone with enough interest in cars and dedication to learn the steps certainly can easily do it, yet nobody should try to convince their grandparents who aren't already highly self-motivated to start doing it.
- 999900000999 2y agoEventually you have to trust someone anyway. If you don't trust Gmail, then you have to use Proton to host it, don't trust them then your on AWS, don't trust them you still need you ISP to play nice with a home server. Unless you want to raise your own carrier pigeons...
- mmooss 2y agoHave tried giving detailed directions to people? Nobody follows them, and the few who try don't do it effectively. There are many steps to setting up a domain - and with an email host!
- robertlagrant 2y agoYou're both wrong (-: Currently it's too hard for normal users, but it would be possible for e.g. Proton to add a feature where you can either import your domain name, or create a new one.
- palata 2y agoI said "own your domain", not "self-host your email server".
- kube-system 2y ago"own your domain" is technobabble to 99.999+% of email users. Most people understand emails addresses are <something> "@gmail.com" or "@yahoo.com" or "@<somebigcompany>.com". They don't understand the parts of an email address, nor how or why they are constructed that way. I have been using a personal domain for my email address for decades and when I have to give it out verbally to someone, it is about a 50% chance that the conversation is: "My email is <name@myname.tld>" "uuhhh... at gmail.com?" "No it's just <@myname.tld>" "Yeah, but is it gmail or yahoo?"
- linkregister 2y agoWorse is the California DMV. All password reset emails going to my custom .com would be subject to multi-hour delays; the password resets were valid for only a few minutes. The only way into the account was to call the tech support phone line. I had them delete the old account and re-registered with a bland gmail email address. I don't know of any technical reason to delay emails to minor domains. My domain has valid MX records, uses SPF, has valid DKIM TXT records, etc.
- lelanthran 2y ago> I don't know of any technical reason to delay emails to minor domains. My domain has valid MX records, uses SPF, has valid DKIM TXT records, etc. I still run into that with my business address; after much mucking around with client's MS admin who did various pieces of magic on their online/azure/microsoft email platform until we finally got it down to around 2m for the delay. The upside appears to be that now all clients who are using microsoft appear to have only a 2m delay when sending email to my business domain.
- kelnos 2y agoStrange. I have my own .org and I've never had a problem with the California DMV's reset emails... I just had to reset mine a month or so ago to start my license renewal, and the reset email showed up almost as fast as I could switch tabs to my webmail.
- lelanthran 2y ago> The average person is not intelligent enough to have their own domain. You think that that skill (maintaining own domain for email) is an indicator of intelligence?
- johnisgood 2y agoIt is an indicator of knowledge, not necessarily intelligence.
- palata 2y agoMy interpretation was that they didn't mean to talk about "intelligence", just meant that the average person is not "competent enough" to have their own domain. Which in all fairness is not wrong. My question is always: of those who are competent, why is the vast majority not having their own domain?
- Hojojo 2y agoGetting a domain is no more difficult than selecting some "easy web hosting and email" bundle on a site and paying for it with bank transfer, credit card or whatever. There's an entire industry around this. I've met plenty of people who are largely clueless about PCs, doctors, lawyers, artists, etc who have their own domain. It's actually extremely common, because conducting business from a Gmail account is a bit unprofessional and sketchy, particularly here in Germany.
- kdasme 2y ago> You probably know this already, but people should have their own domain. Until they forget or unable to renew. And then their PII is in the hands of the person who gets the domain.
- SR2Z 2y agoI mean, sure, but I and probably 99% of other folks have a credit card set up to autorenew. This is a security problem, but not a very serious one.
- stubish 2y agoCredit cards have expiry dates, or at least they do over here. I expect my partners domain to expire 10 years after my death, as I can only pay 10 years in advance. To many people, there are more important things to worry about (and often second thoughts after the fact).
- koolba 2y agoWhy hasn’t anyone made a TLD with infinite expiration? The price should just be the present value of the annual fee cash flows.
- pyrolistical 2y agoI don’t get it, example?
- neongreen 2y agoA promise of money in the future is worth less than getting this money now. Present value (PV) here would be - how much you would pay now to get $X after T time. Turns out that sum of PV($X in 1 year) + PV($X in 2 years) + … converges even though the series is infinite. Look up “perpetual bonds”. The value of $10 paid annually forever is probably $200-500 depending on [things]. Source: I work in a bank but I’m also shit at finance so take this with a large grain of salt.
- phantomathkg 2y agoPeople should, but is the existing process simple enough even any laymen can do is the question.
- palata 2y agoTo be fair, most people I know that are competent to do it just don't. So there is probably another reason, like "people can't be arsed to do it".
- al_borland 2y agoIf you're going to buy a domain for this, don't get fancy with the TLD. I made the mistake of choosing a .io domain for this purpose and with the future of the TLD uncertain, I have been moving away from it, so I'm not left in a bad spot if things go sideways.
- tombert 2y agowait what? Is .io going away? I have a .app domain for my email, and have had it since like 2018. Now I'm wondering if that was a mistake.
- ms512 2y ago.io is the ccTLD for Chagos Islands. UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius. There is a mixed history of what happens to the ccTLD in such cases. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41729526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41729526
- williamscales 2y agoThe British Indian Ocean Territories (.io) might go to control of Mauritius. They will be able to decide what to do with the TLD. It could in principle be restricted to residents, or go away entirely.
- xp84 2y ago> It could in principle be restricted to residents, or go away entirely. If the UK loses control of it, I'd put most of my betting money on Option 3: The new owners extort everyone with a .io domain for a rate proportional to the perceived value. In other words, $50K a year for a successful tech company, $1000 a year for the average joe who doesn't want to lose control of a domain tied to 1,000 accounts.
- easygenes 2y agoThe average Joe with an io domain is probably a developer happier to code up a migration than be extorted so dearly.