8 ms·

This story is the one that finally pushed me to leave google. I moved off my ~20 year old Google account and deleted everything off their services including alm

This story is the one that finally pushed me to leave google. I moved off my ~20 year old Google account and deleted everything off their services including almost a decade of Google photos. I cancelled my Google one subscription for extra space. I'm now self hosting what I can and paying proton mail for everything else. I refuse to allow a company that will hand over data at the request of an administrative warrant to hold my data.

fluidcruft 6mo ago
When did you find out about this? The timeline of this actually pushing you to do all that seems a bit unbelievable and difficult to take seriously.
- busterarm 6mo ago
  It's this account's only comment and was only created right before posting. It has no credibility.
  - djeastm 6mo ago
    They could just be very concerned with privacy.
  - LastTrain 6mo ago
    If they were motivated enough by this story to delete 20 years worth of history maybe they were motivated enough to create an account and talk about it?
    - busterarm 6mo ago
      I don't care. The UX means I can't give it any credibility. For all I know this could be somebody's OpenClaw spouting bullshit. The default credibility of all throwaways is zero and that was even true before 2023. If you let it influence your opinion in any way you're a fool.
      - linkregister 6mo ago
        From busterarm's profile: "Most people are stupid and/or on drugs." The account is from 2013 but given that profile, I can't give it any credibility. After all, it could be somebody's OpenClaw having been granted control of the account.
        busterarm 6mo ago
        > After all, it could be somebody's OpenClaw having been granted control of the account. Luckily for HN, I actually have a post history. You can use my post history, textual analysis and statistics to make an informed decision about whether I'm a bot or not. Whether I'm being consistent or spouting any random bs. The account I was responding to doesn't have anything. > The account is from 2013 but given that profile, I can't give it any credibility. What's in my profile is a statistical fact. It's there as a reminder, to me, not to expect everyone to see the world the same way that I do. To be comfortable with strong disagreement. Just a hair shy of half the population is below average intelligence. Roughly 1 in 4 people has a cognitive impairment. This is of any age but trends upwards with age, reaching 2 in 3 by age 70. 1 in 4 Americans take psychiatric medication. 1 in 4 participates in illegal drug use. We haven't even touched on alcohol abuse. My profile statement is just objective reality, whether you're comfortable with being stated openly or not.
      - herewulf 6mo ago
        The content of the message is the credibility. It doesn't matter where it came from or who posted it. This exact topic comes up every time Google reveals its true self and lots of us have a resurgence of our latent interest to de-Google (the massive inconvenience being the major barrier).
  - jfoworjf 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    - busterarm 6mo ago
      `Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to.` This just proves my point to discount what you say. You're basically admitting to being a pest.
    - fluidcruft 6mo ago
      That puts some responsibility on you to provide more context for your comments as extra signals of authenticity.
      - traderj0e 6mo ago
        No it doesn't. I don't care how many HN comments you have.
        fluidcruft 6mo ago
        An extensive comment history signals alignment with the community.
        busterarm 6mo ago
        More than that but they back up the things they say with something more than vapor. You don't have to dox yourself, but people have to be able to at least call you out on consistency. There needs to be some indication that you're not _just_ a sockpuppet. Otherwise I don't have any justification to engage with your expressions seriously.
        traderj0e 6mo ago
        What does it mean to be aligned with HN? Cause pretty sure I'm not that
- wat10000 6mo ago
  Maybe they read one of the articles written about this incident months ago.
- jjulius 6mo ago
  Setting aside the fact that this is a new account and it's their only post, what about the timeline is difficult to understand? The request came in April 2025, and the user was notified the following month. That's next to a year for them to hear about it internally and then quit and setup self-hosting prior to today.
- nostrademons 6mo ago
  Note that there was a major press cycle about this in October / November of last year - a quick Google showed stories in the Guardian, The Intercept, and the Cornell Sun, as well as commentary on Reddit. Not inconceivable that they found about it last October and had six months to leave and de-Googlify.
  - caminante 6mo ago
    > Note that there was a major press cycle about this in October / November of last year Fair point. However...the parent's comment is also fair because the article does a poor job of raising this material fact. You have to click through a sub-article. It's almost like this article should be tagged (2025) because it's basically a replay of the author's account from 2025.[0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palestinian-foreigners-protests-campus-ai-ice-trump-us-migrant https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palest...
- jfoworjf 6mo ago
  As other comments say, it was a major story months ago. I started moving off around December. It's a long process to switch over all email accounts. I only recently got self hosted kubernetes set up for immich as a Google photos replacement and some other hosting needs but for the most part I am off google. I get probably 1-2 emails a week still going to Gmail but when I do I just switch those accounts to my new email. It will be a while before the old Gmail is deleted entirely unfortunately. I didn't mention it in op but I also moved to graphene os which tbh feels much better than android has recently.
traderj0e 6mo ago
Wasn't even a warrant, right? They did this willingly.
- pixel_popping 6mo ago
  Google leak ALL the time without warrant, Apple as well.
  - traderj0e 6mo ago
    When have they done this before?
    - pixel_popping 6mo ago
      500k time a year: https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview
      - traderj0e 6mo ago
        Those are supposedly ones where they legally had to comply. This case was different.
        pixel_popping 6mo ago
        No, they do it also for any sort of administrative, without warrant.
- inkysigma 6mo ago
  Depends on how legitimate you consider an administrative warrant and how willingly you think complying with one is. On a more practical level, forcing them to go to court might not be much better. If this went to a FISA court, those are essentially rubber stamps and give nearly 100% approval.
smallmancontrov 6mo ago
Migrating is such a good feeling. You don't have to do it all at once, either: I migrated to fastmail over the course of several years. Each time google did something that got my blood pressure up I went into my password manager and migrated another account. In aggregate it was a hassle, but these days I almost miss the feeling of being able to do something in response to stinky actions from google.
- anonymousiam 6mo ago
  I've migrated everything from Google except for Google Voice. I have yet to find an alternative that can match the feature set and ease of use, regardless of the cost.
  - samtheprogram 6mo ago
    What part of the feature set in particular has been lacking in competitors? EDIT: asking because I've been working on an alternative of sorts. I used GV a lot before I figured I could go without it/Google.
    - armadyl 6mo ago
      I'm not sure what the OP does, but at least for me I find myself chained to Google Voice for SMS 2FA use because it's basically the only phone number provider that cannot be exploited with a sim swap attack (same deal with Google Fi). And while I don't necessarily trust Google, their account security is leagues ahead of anyone else imo. I previously looked at jmp.chat but they didn't really inspire confidence on the security front.
      - anonymousiam 6mo ago
        My use cases include 2FA and I like the added security that Voice provides, but it's not really added security, it's just moving the risk from your cell provider to Google. IMHO, Google does security better than the cell providers do. I like the muti-platform integration of Voice. I use it on my iPad, on my Android phone, and mostly from my desktop. It works well on all platforms. When I'm at home, I mainly use my VoIP phones. GV forwards to them, and they spoof my GV numbers when I make outgoing calls. I like the spam text and call protections that GV provides. I believe they're partnered and integrated with Nomorobo. I also have jmp.chat. It has capabilities that GV doesn't have, but it's not well integrated. (I use Cheogram on my Android phone, but there's no easily usable client on my iPad, or my desktop.)
dismalaf 6mo ago
Apple and Microsoft are also subject to US laws. It's not like any company can get around this.
- jll29 6mo ago
  That statement is true at face value. But if you look at how Eric Schmidt travels with government representatives, how rich and powerful BigTech is, and how much they individually and collectively spend on lobbying, then they could be a massive obstacle if they only cared.
- linkregister 6mo ago
  Administrative warrants do not carry the weight of law. It's merely a term of art for a request for information.
- criddell 6mo ago
  The Apple story isn’t too bad if you can deal with the limitations of advanced data protection. It doesn’t cover email, but does cover: - iCloud Backup (including device and Messages backup) - iCloud Drive - Photos - Notes - Reminders - Safari Bookmarks - Siri Shortcuts - Voice Memos - Wallet passes - Freeform That’s according to https://proton.me/blog/apple-icloud-privacy https://proton.me/blog/apple-icloud-privacy A reasonable approach might be to use an iPhone with a privacy respecting email provider.
pesus 6mo ago
Have you run into any serious complications doing that? I'm a bit worried that I've used my google account for so long and for many things that I might accidentally lock myself out of something important without it.
- magicalhippo 6mo ago
  I migrated away from my main email, it wasn't a Google mail but it was on the providers domain. First I signed up with Proton Mail and added my own domain, they fit the bill for me, YMMV. Then I did a search in my password manager and went through those accounts. Then I just let the old account sit there for a year. Each time I got an email from something I cared about I'd log in and change mail. It's been a year now, and I'm about to terminate the old account. All I get there now is occasional spam. I really dreaded this, but all in all quite painless. And next time it should be easier since I now own the email domain. edit: Forgot to mention I use Thunderbird, so old email I archived to local folders. That's part if why I ended with Proton, their IMAP bridge allows me to keep using Thunderbird.
  - barrkel 6mo ago
    I exported all my email with Google Takeout, and Claude Code was able to write me a threaded email viewer local web app with basic search (chained ripgrep) in about 10 minutes, for any time I need to search archived emails.
  - al_borland 6mo ago
    I started doing this a while ago, but made the mistake of buying a .io domain. With the future of that domain uncertain, I’ve been rolling that back, not back to Gmail, but to the underlying Proton account for the moment. I’ve also had some bad experiences with rates being raised on domains. That still ends up feeling like a risk to me, as the problem of domain squatters has not been solved, and the “solution” being employed seems to be continued rate hikes and exorbitant pricing for “premium” domains. It makes buying a domain for email not seem worth it… or at least not without its own long-term risks. My current project has been trying to reduce my footprint, by deleting old and unused accounts, so any future migrations will be easier. I’ve found with many sites, this is easier said than done. For example, I deleted my Venmo account at least 2 months ago, yet I just got an email from them yesterday about reviewing privacy settings. Did they delete my account? They sure didn’t delete all my data if I continue to get emails. I’m betting they just set a ‘delete’ flag in the database. The lack of accountability and transparency on these things is really bad.
drnick1 6mo ago
This. The real solution here is to keep your data, encrypted, on your own devices. The idea that everything needs to be in the cloud is absurd and naturally leads to concentration of power.
- palata 6mo ago
  If the data is encrypted, it can go on the cloud, though.
  - flaburgan 6mo ago
    It still is risky, as who knows what tools NSA & cie really have. Even if it feels safe now, it can be stored by them, and what will (quantum?) computers be able to do in a decade? And how will the US gov look like at that time?
    - xmprt 6mo ago
      Forget that. If they are really so motivated, they can get a warrant to raid your home and confiscate your hard drives. It's not an apples to apples comparison because an administrative warrant served to Google is much different from raiding your home but if they wanted to they could. At this point, acting as if America (and many parts of the world for that matter) aren't living under an authoritarian government is futile. We still have freedoms but they're trying really hard to take them away from us.
      - drnick1 6mo ago
        > If they are really so motivated, they can get a warrant to raid your home and confiscate your hard drives. This is where encryption comes in.
        fyver 6mo ago
        Encryption is easy to crack. Ever heard of the $5 wrench attack?
baranul 6mo ago
Use of Google seems to have become implied consent for them to use or give away any and all of your data, for whatever purpose, to any government, legal entity, or advertiser.
cheriot 6mo ago
Are there good hosted options that will not respond to non-judicial data requests? Someone is going to say self hosted is better and I don't disagree, but there's limits to how much time I can spend on self hosted stuff.
- spockz 6mo ago
  Protonmail iirc. You can even get documents and photos synced. Not sure how well it works for photos.
  - busterarm 6mo ago
    Protonmail is widely believed to be compromised and some evidence supporting this has come forth in two separate incidents in the last year. Protonmail also has gone on record stating that they will comply with legal orders from the Swiss government to spy on and turn over the private data of their users. https://proton.me/blog/climate-activist-arrest https://proton.me/blog/climate-activist-arrest Swiss law has recently gotten significantly more aggressive in recent years, especially wrt to prosecuting climate activists. Criminal damages for drawing with chalk on pavement, for example... Look up the "Secret Files Scandal" of 1989 and decide for yourself how comfortable you are with Swiss law.
    - armadyl 6mo ago
      > Protonmail is widely believed to be compromised and some evidence supporting this has come forth in two separate incidents in the last year. There has been no evidence of this, stop spreading misinformation. They're clear on what they can and can't hand over and what you can do to reduce the information that they can hand over like billing info. For some inexplicable reason people expect a corporation to disregard legal government warrants and subpoenas. Thinking any company would do this is next level delusion. Even if you self-hosted, you wouldn't be able to escape this because it would just end up with you in jail. The only protection against that is end to end encryption. And to this day Proton has handed over zero data that falls under their E2EE umbrella. At best, even if you assumed that they were collecting incoming/outgoing emails before encryption it would be nonsensical to think that this wasn't happening to other providers, it's just the nature of email. Nobody who cares about absolute privacy should be using it as a means of critical communication regardless. The notion that Proton capitulates and somehow hands over your emails or other encrypted data is false and completely unsubstantiated. Unlike Google on the other hand, who will hand over your entire inbox unencrypted with zero issue to DHS/the FBI merely for writing a letter to an attorney: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/homeland-security-administrative-subpoena/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/hom... https://archive.is/kmWHG https://archive.is/kmWHG
einpoklum 6mo ago
It's good that people migrate, just remember that you haven't deleted anything. They have all of that data and so do various US government agencies and, who knows, maybe other third parties. Also remember, that when you exchange email with people who use GMail, then they've got you again.
Gigachad 6mo ago
If you haven’t already, have a look at Immich. It’s a fantastic self hosted replacement for Google photos. They have pretty much perfectly replicated the UI.
- raybb 6mo ago
  Have you tried Ente.io and have any thoughts on comparison? I only use ente and have been happy with it but hear many good things about immich. Does it support E2EE?
  - Gigachad 6mo ago
    Immich is self hosted only so it doesn’t really need e2ee since you can just encrypt the disk of the server. It also runs a load of on server machine learning stuff for automatic people tagging and search.
    - raybb 6mo ago
      Ente is selfhosted (also has a hosted version) but encourages family use so I think that's why they do E2EE. It also does all the ML on the client side for people tagging and search. Mozilla backed it with a grant but that was a few years ago.
  - cromka 6mo ago
    I used Ente, switched to immich just recently. Overall immich gives more of a quality feeling, has much more community support as well and a clear roadmap. I also think it will eventually receive nice, native apps for all platforms with the support of sizeable community. E2EE in Ente was nice but that's pretty much its only advantage.
sneak 6mo ago
It was 13 years ago that Snowden told us they were using FAA702 as the #1 source of sigint to warrantlessly obtain any data they want from major service providers. Did you not understand it at the time? Did you not see the news stories? This isn't rhetoric, I'm genuinely curious. It's been public knowledge for a long long time that Google hands data over to the USG without a warrant (likely without even Google eyes on the request, via automated means). What changed that this story was the one that made you react?
ghm2199 6mo ago
Nice. I want to do the same too. What process/workflow did you use to move all the websites you had given your email addresses to, to move to your proton email? I am guessing it will take several years, but I would like to start the move of my gmail.
globalnode 6mo ago
it was mainly meta-data they acquired, which paints a fairly complete picture of what you do on the internet anyway. an isp can hand it over also but google likely just has more of it to give.
btbuildem 6mo ago
I've built a tool that scanned my inbox, identified tiers of emails per various criteria (essentially how personal, important, unique/irreplaceable etc the information contained therin is) and built semantic search over it. My initial motivation for this was the "account 89% full" notice, so I wanted to delete all the old junk to free up some space. But after reviewing what's in there (and I've had that account since ~2004) the opposite sentiment arose: delete everything important, unique, personal. Leave them with the junkyard of various subscriptions, newsletters, just the digital flotsam that's both ambiguous and meaningless -- perfect for appearing both legitimate and irrelevant.
hedora 6mo ago
[dead]
k33n 6mo ago
[flagged]

fluidcruft 6mo ago

When did you find out about this? The timeline of this actually pushing you to do all that seems a bit unbelievable and difficult to take seriously.

busterarm 6mo ago
It's this account's only comment and was only created right before posting. It has no credibility.
- djeastm 6mo ago
  They could just be very concerned with privacy.
- LastTrain 6mo ago
  If they were motivated enough by this story to delete 20 years worth of history maybe they were motivated enough to create an account and talk about it?
  - busterarm 6mo ago
    I don't care. The UX means I can't give it any credibility. For all I know this could be somebody's OpenClaw spouting bullshit. The default credibility of all throwaways is zero and that was even true before 2023. If you let it influence your opinion in any way you're a fool.
    - linkregister 6mo ago
      From busterarm's profile: "Most people are stupid and/or on drugs." The account is from 2013 but given that profile, I can't give it any credibility. After all, it could be somebody's OpenClaw having been granted control of the account.
      - busterarm 6mo ago
        > After all, it could be somebody's OpenClaw having been granted control of the account. Luckily for HN, I actually have a post history. You can use my post history, textual analysis and statistics to make an informed decision about whether I'm a bot or not. Whether I'm being consistent or spouting any random bs. The account I was responding to doesn't have anything. > The account is from 2013 but given that profile, I can't give it any credibility. What's in my profile is a statistical fact. It's there as a reminder, to me, not to expect everyone to see the world the same way that I do. To be comfortable with strong disagreement. Just a hair shy of half the population is below average intelligence. Roughly 1 in 4 people has a cognitive impairment. This is of any age but trends upwards with age, reaching 2 in 3 by age 70. 1 in 4 Americans take psychiatric medication. 1 in 4 participates in illegal drug use. We haven't even touched on alcohol abuse. My profile statement is just objective reality, whether you're comfortable with being stated openly or not.
    - herewulf 6mo ago
      The content of the message is the credibility. It doesn't matter where it came from or who posted it. This exact topic comes up every time Google reveals its true self and lots of us have a resurgence of our latent interest to de-Google (the massive inconvenience being the major barrier).
- jfoworjf 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - busterarm 6mo ago
    `Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to.` This just proves my point to discount what you say. You're basically admitting to being a pest.
  - fluidcruft 6mo ago
    That puts some responsibility on you to provide more context for your comments as extra signals of authenticity.
    - traderj0e 6mo ago
      No it doesn't. I don't care how many HN comments you have.
      - fluidcruft 6mo ago
        An extensive comment history signals alignment with the community.
        busterarm 6mo ago
        More than that but they back up the things they say with something more than vapor. You don't have to dox yourself, but people have to be able to at least call you out on consistency. There needs to be some indication that you're not _just_ a sockpuppet. Otherwise I don't have any justification to engage with your expressions seriously.
        traderj0e 6mo ago
        What does it mean to be aligned with HN? Cause pretty sure I'm not that
wat10000 6mo ago
Maybe they read one of the articles written about this incident months ago.
jjulius 6mo ago
Setting aside the fact that this is a new account and it's their only post, what about the timeline is difficult to understand? The request came in April 2025, and the user was notified the following month. That's next to a year for them to hear about it internally and then quit and setup self-hosting prior to today.
nostrademons 6mo ago
Note that there was a major press cycle about this in October / November of last year - a quick Google showed stories in the Guardian, The Intercept, and the Cornell Sun, as well as commentary on Reddit. Not inconceivable that they found about it last October and had six months to leave and de-Googlify.
- caminante 6mo ago
  > Note that there was a major press cycle about this in October / November of last year Fair point. However...the parent's comment is also fair because the article does a poor job of raising this material fact. You have to click through a sub-article. It's almost like this article should be tagged (2025) because it's basically a replay of the author's account from 2025.[0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palestinian-foreigners-protests-campus-ai-ice-trump-us-migrant https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palest...
jfoworjf 6mo ago
As other comments say, it was a major story months ago. I started moving off around December. It's a long process to switch over all email accounts. I only recently got self hosted kubernetes set up for immich as a Google photos replacement and some other hosting needs but for the most part I am off google. I get probably 1-2 emails a week still going to Gmail but when I do I just switch those accounts to my new email. It will be a while before the old Gmail is deleted entirely unfortunately. I didn't mention it in op but I also moved to graphene os which tbh feels much better than android has recently.

traderj0e 6mo ago

Wasn't even a warrant, right? They did this willingly.

pixel_popping 6mo ago
Google leak ALL the time without warrant, Apple as well.
- traderj0e 6mo ago
  When have they done this before?
  - pixel_popping 6mo ago
    500k time a year: https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview
    - traderj0e 6mo ago
      Those are supposedly ones where they legally had to comply. This case was different.
      - pixel_popping 6mo ago
        No, they do it also for any sort of administrative, without warrant.
inkysigma 6mo ago
Depends on how legitimate you consider an administrative warrant and how willingly you think complying with one is. On a more practical level, forcing them to go to court might not be much better. If this went to a FISA court, those are essentially rubber stamps and give nearly 100% approval.

smallmancontrov 6mo ago

Migrating is such a good feeling. You don't have to do it all at once, either: I migrated to fastmail over the course of several years. Each time google did something that got my blood pressure up I went into my password manager and migrated another account. In aggregate it was a hassle, but these days I almost miss the feeling of being able to do something in response to stinky actions from google.

anonymousiam 6mo ago
I've migrated everything from Google except for Google Voice. I have yet to find an alternative that can match the feature set and ease of use, regardless of the cost.
- samtheprogram 6mo ago
  What part of the feature set in particular has been lacking in competitors? EDIT: asking because I've been working on an alternative of sorts. I used GV a lot before I figured I could go without it/Google.
  - armadyl 6mo ago
    I'm not sure what the OP does, but at least for me I find myself chained to Google Voice for SMS 2FA use because it's basically the only phone number provider that cannot be exploited with a sim swap attack (same deal with Google Fi). And while I don't necessarily trust Google, their account security is leagues ahead of anyone else imo. I previously looked at jmp.chat but they didn't really inspire confidence on the security front.
    - anonymousiam 6mo ago
      My use cases include 2FA and I like the added security that Voice provides, but it's not really added security, it's just moving the risk from your cell provider to Google. IMHO, Google does security better than the cell providers do. I like the muti-platform integration of Voice. I use it on my iPad, on my Android phone, and mostly from my desktop. It works well on all platforms. When I'm at home, I mainly use my VoIP phones. GV forwards to them, and they spoof my GV numbers when I make outgoing calls. I like the spam text and call protections that GV provides. I believe they're partnered and integrated with Nomorobo. I also have jmp.chat. It has capabilities that GV doesn't have, but it's not well integrated. (I use Cheogram on my Android phone, but there's no easily usable client on my iPad, or my desktop.)

dismalaf 6mo ago

Apple and Microsoft are also subject to US laws. It's not like any company can get around this.

jll29 6mo ago
That statement is true at face value. But if you look at how Eric Schmidt travels with government representatives, how rich and powerful BigTech is, and how much they individually and collectively spend on lobbying, then they could be a massive obstacle if they only cared.
linkregister 6mo ago
Administrative warrants do not carry the weight of law. It's merely a term of art for a request for information.
criddell 6mo ago
The Apple story isn’t too bad if you can deal with the limitations of advanced data protection. It doesn’t cover email, but does cover: - iCloud Backup (including device and Messages backup) - iCloud Drive - Photos - Notes - Reminders - Safari Bookmarks - Siri Shortcuts - Voice Memos - Wallet passes - Freeform That’s according to https://proton.me/blog/apple-icloud-privacy https://proton.me/blog/apple-icloud-privacy A reasonable approach might be to use an iPhone with a privacy respecting email provider.

pesus 6mo ago

Have you run into any serious complications doing that? I'm a bit worried that I've used my google account for so long and for many things that I might accidentally lock myself out of something important without it.

magicalhippo 6mo ago
I migrated away from my main email, it wasn't a Google mail but it was on the providers domain. First I signed up with Proton Mail and added my own domain, they fit the bill for me, YMMV. Then I did a search in my password manager and went through those accounts. Then I just let the old account sit there for a year. Each time I got an email from something I cared about I'd log in and change mail. It's been a year now, and I'm about to terminate the old account. All I get there now is occasional spam. I really dreaded this, but all in all quite painless. And next time it should be easier since I now own the email domain. edit: Forgot to mention I use Thunderbird, so old email I archived to local folders. That's part if why I ended with Proton, their IMAP bridge allows me to keep using Thunderbird.
- barrkel 6mo ago
  I exported all my email with Google Takeout, and Claude Code was able to write me a threaded email viewer local web app with basic search (chained ripgrep) in about 10 minutes, for any time I need to search archived emails.
- al_borland 6mo ago
  I started doing this a while ago, but made the mistake of buying a .io domain. With the future of that domain uncertain, I’ve been rolling that back, not back to Gmail, but to the underlying Proton account for the moment. I’ve also had some bad experiences with rates being raised on domains. That still ends up feeling like a risk to me, as the problem of domain squatters has not been solved, and the “solution” being employed seems to be continued rate hikes and exorbitant pricing for “premium” domains. It makes buying a domain for email not seem worth it… or at least not without its own long-term risks. My current project has been trying to reduce my footprint, by deleting old and unused accounts, so any future migrations will be easier. I’ve found with many sites, this is easier said than done. For example, I deleted my Venmo account at least 2 months ago, yet I just got an email from them yesterday about reviewing privacy settings. Did they delete my account? They sure didn’t delete all my data if I continue to get emails. I’m betting they just set a ‘delete’ flag in the database. The lack of accountability and transparency on these things is really bad.

drnick1 6mo ago

This. The real solution here is to keep your data, encrypted, on your own devices. The idea that everything needs to be in the cloud is absurd and naturally leads to concentration of power.

palata 6mo ago
If the data is encrypted, it can go on the cloud, though.
- flaburgan 6mo ago
  It still is risky, as who knows what tools NSA & cie really have. Even if it feels safe now, it can be stored by them, and what will (quantum?) computers be able to do in a decade? And how will the US gov look like at that time?
  - xmprt 6mo ago
    Forget that. If they are really so motivated, they can get a warrant to raid your home and confiscate your hard drives. It's not an apples to apples comparison because an administrative warrant served to Google is much different from raiding your home but if they wanted to they could. At this point, acting as if America (and many parts of the world for that matter) aren't living under an authoritarian government is futile. We still have freedoms but they're trying really hard to take them away from us.
    - drnick1 6mo ago
      > If they are really so motivated, they can get a warrant to raid your home and confiscate your hard drives. This is where encryption comes in.
      - fyver 6mo ago
        Encryption is easy to crack. Ever heard of the $5 wrench attack?

baranul 6mo ago

Use of Google seems to have become implied consent for them to use or give away any and all of your data, for whatever purpose, to any government, legal entity, or advertiser.

cheriot 6mo ago

Are there good hosted options that will not respond to non-judicial data requests? Someone is going to say self hosted is better and I don't disagree, but there's limits to how much time I can spend on self hosted stuff.

spockz 6mo ago
Protonmail iirc. You can even get documents and photos synced. Not sure how well it works for photos.
- busterarm 6mo ago
  Protonmail is widely believed to be compromised and some evidence supporting this has come forth in two separate incidents in the last year. Protonmail also has gone on record stating that they will comply with legal orders from the Swiss government to spy on and turn over the private data of their users. https://proton.me/blog/climate-activist-arrest https://proton.me/blog/climate-activist-arrest Swiss law has recently gotten significantly more aggressive in recent years, especially wrt to prosecuting climate activists. Criminal damages for drawing with chalk on pavement, for example... Look up the "Secret Files Scandal" of 1989 and decide for yourself how comfortable you are with Swiss law.
  - armadyl 6mo ago
    > Protonmail is widely believed to be compromised and some evidence supporting this has come forth in two separate incidents in the last year. There has been no evidence of this, stop spreading misinformation. They're clear on what they can and can't hand over and what you can do to reduce the information that they can hand over like billing info. For some inexplicable reason people expect a corporation to disregard legal government warrants and subpoenas. Thinking any company would do this is next level delusion. Even if you self-hosted, you wouldn't be able to escape this because it would just end up with you in jail. The only protection against that is end to end encryption. And to this day Proton has handed over zero data that falls under their E2EE umbrella. At best, even if you assumed that they were collecting incoming/outgoing emails before encryption it would be nonsensical to think that this wasn't happening to other providers, it's just the nature of email. Nobody who cares about absolute privacy should be using it as a means of critical communication regardless. The notion that Proton capitulates and somehow hands over your emails or other encrypted data is false and completely unsubstantiated. Unlike Google on the other hand, who will hand over your entire inbox unencrypted with zero issue to DHS/the FBI merely for writing a letter to an attorney: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/homeland-security-administrative-subpoena/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/hom... https://archive.is/kmWHG https://archive.is/kmWHG

einpoklum 6mo ago

It's good that people migrate, just remember that you haven't deleted anything. They have all of that data and so do various US government agencies and, who knows, maybe other third parties. Also remember, that when you exchange email with people who use GMail, then they've got you again.

Gigachad 6mo ago

If you haven’t already, have a look at Immich. It’s a fantastic self hosted replacement for Google photos. They have pretty much perfectly replicated the UI.

raybb 6mo ago
Have you tried Ente.io and have any thoughts on comparison? I only use ente and have been happy with it but hear many good things about immich. Does it support E2EE?
- Gigachad 6mo ago
  Immich is self hosted only so it doesn’t really need e2ee since you can just encrypt the disk of the server. It also runs a load of on server machine learning stuff for automatic people tagging and search.
  - raybb 6mo ago
    Ente is selfhosted (also has a hosted version) but encourages family use so I think that's why they do E2EE. It also does all the ML on the client side for people tagging and search. Mozilla backed it with a grant but that was a few years ago.
- cromka 6mo ago
  I used Ente, switched to immich just recently. Overall immich gives more of a quality feeling, has much more community support as well and a clear roadmap. I also think it will eventually receive nice, native apps for all platforms with the support of sizeable community. E2EE in Ente was nice but that's pretty much its only advantage.

sneak 6mo ago

It was 13 years ago that Snowden told us they were using FAA702 as the #1 source of sigint to warrantlessly obtain any data they want from major service providers. Did you not understand it at the time? Did you not see the news stories? This isn't rhetoric, I'm genuinely curious. It's been public knowledge for a long long time that Google hands data over to the USG without a warrant (likely without even Google eyes on the request, via automated means). What changed that this story was the one that made you react?

ghm2199 6mo ago

Nice. I want to do the same too. What process/workflow did you use to move all the websites you had given your email addresses to, to move to your proton email? I am guessing it will take several years, but I would like to start the move of my gmail.

globalnode 6mo ago

it was mainly meta-data they acquired, which paints a fairly complete picture of what you do on the internet anyway. an isp can hand it over also but google likely just has more of it to give.

btbuildem 6mo ago

I've built a tool that scanned my inbox, identified tiers of emails per various criteria (essentially how personal, important, unique/irreplaceable etc the information contained therin is) and built semantic search over it. My initial motivation for this was the "account 89% full" notice, so I wanted to delete all the old junk to free up some space. But after reviewing what's in there (and I've had that account since ~2004) the opposite sentiment arose: delete everything important, unique, personal. Leave them with the junkyard of various subscriptions, newsletters, just the digital flotsam that's both ambiguous and meaningless -- perfect for appearing both legitimate and irrelevant.

hedora 6mo ago

[dead]

k33n 6mo ago

[flagged]