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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?

#241
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'…

I am not that smart but I always thought that using one company's authentication system to log into another site can be a source of massive trouble. I connect all my logins with my (custom-domain) E-mail and also do regular IMAP backups of my E-mails. I run Thunderbird once a week and sync all mails.

Yes, do not force failures to be correlated.

Ideally one goes in life forcing failures to be uncorrelated, but that's extra work. Anyway forcing them to be correlated is also extra work, so just don't.

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

#242

Phone number porting is a thing due to regulation. I'm looking forward to having email address porting legislation, one day. For full porting, there's a long road ahead, starting with regulating domain names, which email addresses depend on. However, as long as the domain name _de facto_ remains in the possession of the original provider, this is technically possible, already. Email address porting might even be poss…

I would imagine it takes the form of a government "porting server", where anyone can query an email address and receive back a different target email address. All people sending email will be required by law to first consult the porting server to determine where to send email. It could be as simple as an http endpoint. Total development costs and running costs could be pretty low - low enough that the government can…

Having the government having information about everyone’s email address…

What could possibly go wrong?

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

#243
The way I see it is that folks are becoming peasants or serfs. They are doing it voluntarily, and are almost solely motivated by convenience. Google (and the rest) talk and act like obsequious servants (one outfit even called themselves "Ask Jeeves" after the greatest fictional valet in English literature!) but they are more like drug pushers: they do not actually care about you, they just want your money/data. The free stuff they give you is not altruistic, it's to hook you.

I know that a lot of good and earnest people work at Google (and the rest) but that doesn't change the nature of the beast. If anything it makes it more pathetic that these good people are powering the corporations that are subjugating the masses. They are the ones that hear the sad stories on the back channels (official support is nearly useless, by design!) and intervene with the "Powers that Be" to fix problems here and there. But by easing the pain of some people they reinforce the dependency of all users. (I could go on about the psychological impact of intermittent rewards and capricious authority on conditioning people to obey, but I'm not an expert and anyway it's really depressing.)

So, we have been hoodwinked by pushers, we have voluntarily given up our let's call them "rights and responsibilities" to these unelected quasi-anonymous semi-authoritarian organizations that are not beholden to us directly in pretty much any way, and we are "fine, just fine" with it right up until they flush our digital lives down the toilet.

> Should we own the free services that we've paid for with money and data?

No. What are you a commie? Seriously though, you own what you own, you didn't pay for anything, and what do you want to actually do anyway? Pass laws that claw back some of your autonomy? Why give it up in the first place? Convenience. Bottom line: you're looking for ways to make other people pay for your laziness.

> Do we own our identities?

Both ownership and identity are abstract mental concepts. In contrast, rights, laws, contracts, Terms of Service, etc. are all part of the vast and ancient mechanisms we employ to manage real world assets and relationships. You can talk back and forth all day but in the end "get it in writing".

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

Again, these are mostly philosophical concepts. If you want to discuss them in concrete terms we have to talk about laws, etc. For example people found it desirable and convenient to be able to be reached by the same phone number even if they switch carriers, so we got enough clout together to make some laws about it, and compelled carriers to support it.

So we can pass laws to, in effect, create new kinds of "owning".

But again, the way I see it is that you're using these FAANG systems out of convenience or because they give you something you want and you don't care that they have you by the "short hairs" right up until they jerk the rug out from under you. Yet, rather than abandoning these systems and using something else, you want to pass laws to make them do what you want them to do. In other words, rather than rewarding the folks who are trying to do right by you by using their systems, you want to keep using and even improve the system that is exploiting you, even if you have to do it against the "will" of the corporation supplying the systems/services.

Is that right?

> What do you use for identity?

Cryptography. (I originally wrote "Fucking cryptography, duh!" but then I thought that might be a little over the top and changed it.)

I use ssh keys mostly.

> And what are your thoughts on this?

To recap: to me you seem like a lazy fool who should have known better. You seem to want a legal solution ("ownership" is a legal concept) rather than just using some other service(s) that won't screw you over.

> Am I overreacting?

Yes. People are hard at work building "identity" services that work under your own control. You should avail yourself of their efforts, stop using exploitative "services", and get on with your life.

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

#244
post #201
post #30

When you put it this way, it's really quite remarkable how tenuous our hold is on even paid for digital services. There is really nothing you could do with a car to prompt the car maker to take it from you. And the state will only take it if you break the law in particularly dangerous ways. When it comes to other possessions it's even harder for anyone to take them away from you. If I take a kitchen knife and stab so…

Not to be That Guy, since I'm not a shill, but "Bitcoin solves this" — not really today, except for pure cryptocurrency, but I can imagine a future where ownership of our access to these services is controlled by public blockchains ...

Why would that solve anything? Google could still cancel my gmail if I say something politically incorrect, regardless of their database technology. It's not like making my email public would change anything, they are not reluctant to cancel people just because others can see it. If anything, that makes the cancellation all the more effective.

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

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I looked at office365 as well and discovered the bizarre fact you can only redirect custom domains from one registrar. GoDaddy I think it was?

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

#246
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have email porting already. With a custom domain, you can point it at any mail host you like. It costs a few bucks a year. There's no reason for a complicated legal structure to ensure mail forwarding (which just begs for abuse). Users already have the power. Use it.

Are you volunteering to call my grandma and walk her through setting that up? Are you also going to pay the yearly domain fees? No? The legal framework needs some work.

Seriously, the domain fees shouldn’t be an issue. And while registering a domain and connecting it to a suitable email provider is a bit more involved than setting up a new phone number, it’s not that complicated either. People without any technical affinity will need help with both.

I agree though that there should be legal resort to not losing your email address.

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

#247
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and on investigation, it told me that it refused to fetch from a mailbox containing more than 50,000 messages. Ironically, you would not have this problem with POP3.

… because POP3 isn’t able to leave messages on the server, it’s such a coarse instrument. You can instruct IMAP fetches to delete too, and that’ll avoid this problem. Better would be to move emails into a new mailbox after fetching them, so that you don’t need to see them again but they’re still there, but I don’t know if anything supports that concept.

POP3 defines separate retrieve and delete requests. Some servers lose messages when you retrieve them, but I've only seen that misbehavior on major ISPs.

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

#248

You can't compel a company to provide you with a service. That's a little too close to slavery for society's taste. If a company doesn't provide you with a service you agreed to, you can get damages from a court, but you have to use such services as your contract agreed. It stinks to end up on the wrong end, but that's part of the cost of getting such massive benefits for free. If you want something more reliable or…

> You don't own phone numbers

What about phone porting? [1] It's ok for Google to refuse you service, but with something so critical it should be possible for other companies to pick up you account

Although having an @gmail account on outlook sounds weird

[1] https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/porting-keeping-your-ph...

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

#249

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…

Why use social login at all when you can use email instead?

On services where sessions have a lifetime for some stupid reason, entering your email and password gets really boring really fast. Even more if they use a username instead of an email. Even more if they require you to change passwords periodically.

Much easier to just click a button.

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

#250
In particular for “free, paid by data” services, things won’t change unless there is regulation enforcing ownership. Because email is the central hub for managing identities, I’d therefore always opt for paid services with a proven track record, and also not use social logins.

Personally I use my own registered domain for email and would encourage anyone to do so.

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