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Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

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Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

#141

Post by theothertom »

londons_explore wrote: post #55
moreira wrote: post #51

> lost access to paid services that I had set up with social login I signed up to Quora with my Facebook account, back in the day. Deleted Facebook in 2013 and lost access to my Quora account, with no possible way to recover it. I haven't used a social login since. In my case, it was fairly harmless, but it made me realise how dangerous social login is. Every time there's a signup, I look for "signup with email". It'…

There really needs to be a zero cost custom-domain email hosting solution. I'd love to have webmail on my own domain, hosted by someone else, and with ads on the side. Those ads should generate ~$20 per user per year (after all, they can be targeted based on emails I'm sending and receiving, and I'll be looking at them many minutes every day - the perfect combination for high revenue ads). With $20/user/year, there s…

My domain registrar provides free, simple mail hosting with a domain - maybe yours does too?

Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

#143

Post by orangepurple »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #56
nicoburns wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Is it easy to set up the redirect from Gmail to the new account? Yes super easy. You can do this using Gmail's filter service. However, many services will also let you log in to gmail via POP/IMAP (OAuth for auth) and fetch the email from your gmail for you that way. > 2. When I send email from new account (custom domain), how are you completely sure it is not going to be on spam? I send unsolicited emails to pe…

You don't need to set up anything in Gmail either, Fastmail has Gmail connectors that pull all your mail and calendars and even lets you send email through Gmail from Fastmail. It's ridiculously convenient.

I have had Fastmail pull from Gmail for about 10 years just in case I need to log into a website I haven't logged into for ages. It just works. My gmail is abandoned save for the occasional password reset which flows through Gmail to Fastmail.

Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

#145

Post by grishka »

A couple of years ago I set up a mail server with my domain to forward everything to gmail. I now give everyone these addresses instead of my underlying gmail one. Yes, Google can still suspend my account for any number of reasons with little to no recourse. But this way I retain the ownership of the front door. If Google does do that, I can reconfigure my server to store incoming mail or to forward it somewhere else.

Social login is more complicated. I usually set up multiple different social logins for every account to make it more redundant against this sort of thing.

Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

#146

Post by andyjohnson0 »

playpause wrote: post #58
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #18

Apologies for going meta here: Could I urge that posters follow the site convention of prefixing the title with with Ask HN, Tell HN, etc. for posts that don't link to an external source? There are currently two such posts in the top 30. HN is primarily for discussing external articles, and I'd suggest that this post should have been submitted as such.

I'm curious, what problem does it create for you, clicking a link you momentarily thought was to an external site before realising it's actually a discussion on this site? Honest question, you might have a good answer, I'm not trying to be rhetorical.

> I'm curious, what problem does it create for you, clicking a link you momentarily thought was to an external site before realising it's actually a discussion on this site? Honest question, you might have a good answer, I'm not trying to be rhetorical.

Good question. And my answer is probably that, as things stand, I'm not greatly inconvenienced by it.

My original post was motivated mainly by "that's not how it's done here". By internet standards, I think that HN does pretty well as a self-organising community. And part of that is a general, loose adherence to norms. To maintain that community, I think that sometimes it is necessary for its members to point-out those norms in a friendly way - without trying to police anyone's behaviour. Thats really all I was trying to do.

To me, an important part of HN's value is to direct me to external things. If the norms change so that a significant number of submissions are hosted directly on the site itself, then HN becomes a very different beast. Probably more inward looking, and maybe more like that other site that the guidelines tell us not to compare it to. I think that would be regrettable.

More practically, "Tell HN" and "Ask HN" are hints that the post is addressing the HN community rather than the entire net. That could be useful in deciding whether to read it. And, as a sibling comment mentions, those prefixes result in posts being added to certain lists.

Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

#148

Post by w4rh4wk5 »

> Do we own our phone numbers, emails, handles, PO boxes, addresses?

I'd argue no, and that it should stay that way, and that it needs to become more apparent that we don't own those things.

Just because I am using a certain phone number today does not mean that I'll be using it tomorrow, or still have access to it. It should therefore not be used for identification, even less authorization. Hell, it shouldn't even be a requirement to have a phone number.

Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

#149

Post by vero2 »

> Two days later, my google account was suspended. Apparently, my account was being used to send unwanted e-mails. Ha! I just became a spammer.

The issue is... if you see a mob/protest, Usually the police ask you to leave the place - allow them to take care of the issue. Even if your 'attempts' to resolve/negotiate/help people are very kind, the LE always says that is not your job.

Spam filtering is Google's job. Not yours.

It is possible quite a few people, marked your email as SPAM and therefore you got flagged.

This may sound like victim blaming but please do not take up these tasks unless you know what you are venturing into.

Even https://www.419eater.com/ advice is to stay away from these people (for safety).

Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

#150

Post by xunn0026 »

inanutshellus wrote: post #65
p0d wrote: post #44

A lot of us have also been caught out by Google announcing they are forcing free G-Suite Legacy users to upgrade. Here is where I am heading (having given the matter much thought and some testing, trial and error) Free Gmail/Cal account as I enjoy the software My own custom domains with any registrar Paid Fastmail account storing all my emails to all my domains/aliases at Fastmail All Fastmail messages forwarded to G…

Also caught in the Legacy drama. :-( still haven't decided what to do about it. blurg.

Migrating to Zoho is super easy. Did it for 2 domains.
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