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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?

#291

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#292

Post by sirwitti »

That's the reason why paying for a domain and custom e-mail adresses is the best option in my opinion.

Changing infrastructure / hosting can be done quickly for myself if necessary.

Apart from that, knowing that every e-mail I get or send is being processed by google and potentially read by US authorities simply makes me cringe - even though there's nothing special in my e-mails.

I'd love to self host e-mail and love to read HN posts about it, but I think self-hosting e-mail can become a time sink quite easily.

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

#293

Post by raxxorrax »

Fnoord wrote: post #116

Free services are fantastic, until they break. Or until you get banned. There's people who get their Microsoft banned for no reason, without notice. The reason is some kind of ML algorithm found (rightfully or not) CP in their data, which could have been some public Discord or WhatsApp group or could have been a troll beating the checksum mechanism (it exists for both the Microsoft and Apple one). Good luck getting t…

> There's people who get their Microsoft banned for no reason, without notice.

I got my private MS account suspended after asking a question on their support forums. I could only reactivate it by providing them with my number. I then tried to delete the account, but that would only possible if I could log into it. So now they have another ghost account floating around...

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

#294

Post by raxxorrax »

zivkovicp wrote: post #25

> what is an identity? PGP is a good solution, and in general the crypto space has the right idea in my opinion. I like the idea of using cryptographic key pairs to sign messages and prove identity, but the learning curve makes it impractical for general use. The best place to start is owning a domain you control, at least that way you can manage your own facade.

In some cases providing identity is a good idea. In a web full of advertising it is mostly not.

My domain is completely detached from my online identities, even for private and professional development to a large degree.

Many domains are pretty cheap though, not much more expensive than some mail services. Of course they don't come with respective keys for which you might have to pay extra.

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

#295

Post by Grustaf »

magicjosh wrote: post #281
Grustaf wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If your email were hosted on a public blockchain, Google could not kick you off. - Decentralized file hosting for all the emails using IPFS instead of Google's servers - Decentralized login using ENS / Ethereum Name Service instead of Google's login - a UI on top of your data, plus an outbound server for relaying to/from non-blockchain email accounts Overall, you end up with portable data thanks to IPFS, and a login…

By hosted, do you mean that the blockchain would act as the mail server? Wouldn't that be incredibly slow and inefficient?

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

#296

Post by xunn0026 »

p0d wrote: post #245
xunn0026 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Zoho just wanted some TXT and MX DNS entries. Any registrar should provide you that.

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

#297

Post by CyanDeparture »

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'…

This is naive question, but I think a valid one, and I'd love to know what you think, is using a domain name to sign in, just moving the issue of losing an account to the domain provider? So instead of Google, your host controls your sign-in instead?

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

#298

Post by moreira »

CyanDeparture wrote: post #297
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'…

This is naive question, but I think a valid one, and I'd love to know what you think, is using a domain name to sign in, just moving the issue of losing an account to the domain provider? So instead of Google, your host controls your sign-in instead?

It is, but you're much less likely to find your account suspended by your domain name provider. People lose Google accounts and Amazon accounts and all kinds of other accounts because there's so much going on with them and something somewhere triggers an automated ban (for Google, we've seen issues with people and their YouTube, or their Play Store apps, or in this case, their Gmail).

But you're far less likely to ever have any issues with your domain name provider, because you literally only have your domain with them, and don't interact with them outside of that.

I would say if you want to be extra safe, your domain provider would NOT be your hosting provider. Because you can lose your hosting, too, and we've seen stories like that here a few times.

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

#299

Post by playpause »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #146
playpause wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

Totally agree and to be honest I slightly misunderstood your original comment. You’re definitely being helpful to politely encourage use of the prefix conventions where they are a good fit.

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

#300

Post by magicjosh »

Grustaf wrote: post #295
magicjosh wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your email were hosted on a public blockchain, Google could not kick you off. - Decentralized file hosting for all the emails using IPFS instead of Google's servers - Decentralized login using ENS / Ethereum Name Service instead of Google's login - a UI on top of your data, plus an outbound server for relaying to/from non-blockchain email accounts Overall, you end up with portable data thanks to IPFS, and a login…

By hosted, do you mean that the blockchain would act as the mail server? Wouldn't that be incredibly slow and inefficient?

By hosted I mean stored on IPFS. It's a bit like downloading a file from Bittorrent in that it can be fast and distributed, but with some added crypto layers.

The only part stored on the blockchain is the address itself. The files are not stored on the blockchain.

More here: https://docs.ipfs.io/concepts/what-is-ipfs/

Appreciate your question! That should get you started.

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