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Ask HN: How do you manage the risk of losing access to your email address?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you manage the risk of losing access to your email address?

#21

Post by thiht »

mmh0000 wrote: post #14

Here's how I do it: * Buy your own domain, (Through a reputable registrar that has existed for a long time (enom; joker; namecheap; aws). * Host DNS through a 3rd party (Cloudflare in my case) * Use Fastmail for email hosting on my custom domain * Run a nightly cronjob using offlineimap ( https://github.com/OfflineIMAP/offlineimap ) to sync all hosted email to my local NAS. This protects me from: * Fastmail bans me:…

Just a few points of attention: if you use a ccTLD (2 characters) for your domain, make sure you’re using the ccTLD of the country you live in, and make sure you have no plan in permanently moving to another country. ccTLDs don’t necessarily follow ICANN rules and can change their rules as they see fit, overnight. They can decide that you’re not eligible anymore if you don’t live in the country for example.

This happened with .eu for example, UK residents stopped being eligible to own a .eu after the brexit. Another example is .au, they started requiring an Australian presence in 2022.

My advice as someone who worked in the domain name industry : just get a .com or a .net. There are also some reputable newGTLDs (.dev for example), but you can’t go wrong with .com/.net.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage the risk of losing access to your email address?

#22

Post by defaultcompany »

The ultimate (and often overlooked) failure mode for using your own domain name is death. You will die and at that point unless you have set up and funded a process to renew the domain name perpetually after your death then after some period of time it will expire. Anyone can then register "your" domain name and start using it which includes receiving all the email addressed to it. If your bank happens to send 2FA emails to this account then the new owner will then have access to your bank account. Personally I want my heirs to own my bank account after I'm dead, not whatever random person happens to register a domain name that I was using.

This sounds extreme but it's only the most dramatic example. This scenario can happen any time during your life if your domain is not renewed for any number of other reasons.

So for me I've had to accept the risk which comes from keeping my most important emails on a large free email provider. At least if they ban me they aren't going to let someone else access my email either. For everything else - the less important accounts - I do use a domain name that I "own".

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage the risk of losing access to your email address?

#23

Post by fph »

ramtatatam wrote: post #16
fph wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All your backups are on-site then?

I assume when you mention `on-site` you mean my house - yep, NAS is at home.

What happens if a fire at your house destroys both your computer and the NAS? Or if a thief steals both? Are your data permanently lost?

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage the risk of losing access to your email address?

#24

Post by qwer1234321 »

fph wrote: post #23
ramtatatam wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume when you mention `on-site` you mean my house - yep, NAS is at home.

What happens if a fire at your house destroys both your computer and the NAS? Or if a thief steals both? Are your data permanently lost?

If my house cought fire my NAS burns, and that's fine. If I survive the fire I can still access my email. If I don't Linode shuts it down month later, so it's good for the planet too ;)

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage the risk of losing access to your email address?

#25

Post by jasmes »

Honestly man... just go with AWS+Cloudflare. Get a .com TLD from Route53 (the AWS domain name management experience is actually really good) optionally put it behind Cloudflare, and set up Fastmail.

I really wouldn't worry about having your domain pulled due to "fake abuse reports." If you follow the TOS and pay your bill you're fine. Amazon would look at a false abuse report, then look at your domain, see it is being used for a personal email server and toss out the report. As far as payment goes, just set up auto-billing.

Cloudflare is a necessary evil type of company but they specialize in countering malicious activity. They're good at it. They also offer a service that lets you use a domain name to forward to another email address (like a gmail) so if something happened to your Fastmail you could quickly set up a fallback to keep your domain receiving email.

These are US based companies with more money and power than a lot of countries. The internet is built on them.

They can be relied on for personal email.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage the risk of losing access to your email address?

#26

Post by jasmes »

qwer1234321 wrote: post #24
fph wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if a fire at your house destroys both your computer and the NAS? Or if a thief steals both? Are your data permanently lost?

If my house cought fire my NAS burns, and that's fine. If I survive the fire I can still access my email. If I don't Linode shuts it down month later, so it's good for the planet too ;)

I think the idea was more like... if you can afford a RAID6 NAS at home you can afford Backblaze so don't be silly and get some offsite redundancy going.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage the risk of losing access to your email address?

#28

Post by qwer1234321 »

jasmes wrote: post #26
qwer1234321 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my house cought fire my NAS burns, and that's fine. If I survive the fire I can still access my email. If I don't Linode shuts it down month later, so it's good for the planet too ;)

I think the idea was more like... if you can afford a RAID6 NAS at home you can afford Backblaze so don't be silly and get some offsite redundancy going.

Thank you for drawing my attention to this, I was not aware of Backblaze! I'll have to deduplicate my backups (of backups of backups) and will definitely look into saving most precious bits!

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage the risk of losing access to your email address?

#29

Post by csomar »

You extend the expiry of your domain. Make sure it's 3-4 years, so that you have lots of time to figure things out (ie: credit card expired, account locked, etc...).

Your registrar might kick you out, but is unlikely to seize your domain. If the government seizes your domain, it means you have other gigantic problems.

Overall, having your domain + DNS + Email provider all separate, gives you enough protection. Having your email as gmail has some risk but it's really a very small risk that most people just run on gmail just fine. The setup outlined by mmh is way enough.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage the risk of losing access to your email address?

#30

Post by Spooky23 »

The issue these folks have most of the time is that they fail to keep their info up to date. Do that.

I have a process where I test and update everything annually in December when I complete my annual training. Sign up for legacy and backup contacts. Save emergency codes.

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