Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hear clintonemail.com is available
Too soon?
It isn't available.
Don’t Mess with The Google
91–100 of 504 posts
Re: Don’t Mess with The Google
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fastmail. I'm just a regular (paying) customer, not a business or anything. I've opened a small number of tickets, one or two of the RTFM variety. I've always got a human response and satisfaction, even a "here, let me RTFM that for you." I can't imagine being locked out of my fastmail account for anything other than abuse of my fastmail account . Or not paying my bill.
We also stalk you on... I mean, we read the same tech news sites you do. (I'm on third line ticket duty right now, so if you have something significantly more complex than RTFM, or an actual bug, you'll probably be talking to me this week) The most common cause of getting locked out other than you abusing your fastmail account is having your credentials stolen and used for spam/fraud, which is why we recommend 2 fact…
Awesome - I moved across to fastmail a couple of days ago. I've been using a custom domain for email for awhile (josephg.com), merged with a gmail account. I'm very happy I set that up because moving to fastmail was a cinch - there's no forwarding to do, just a few DNS records to reconfigure. And with a custom domain I'll have that email address for life, no matter what happens to fastmail.
My gmail account (josephg@) gets a tremendous amount of email for other people. Earlier this year I was getting a lot of marketing trash from a particularly excited group of car dealerships in Illinois. Around the same time youtube suspiciously started advertising new cars to me. Its all way too creepy, and reading articles like this about people's gmail accounts getting locked out I'm very happy to reinforce my digital independence from google.
Re: Don’t Mess with The Google
#93This just disgusts me. This is the problem with giving everything we rely on to a for profit corporation like Google, et al. It's not your data if they can take it away from you. Your data is their profit center so we should demand more of these companies or simply avoid them as much as possible.
Cheese off the government enough, and they'll freeze everything , bank accounts, ability to be hired, your freedom to not be in jail, everything, not just "your account with them". The problem isn't the "profit" bit, it's the "everything" bit.
I agree that the "for profit" bit isn't the problem, it's the sheer size of Google. Everyone who has been paying attention has watched with dismay as Apple and "don't be evil" Google (along with other, smaller, actors) have become increasingly amoral over the last decade. Same goes, of course, for the government.
I don't see any reason to believe that there's anything other to it than sheer size: as a company gets larger, it becomes less driven by humans and more driven by its corporate structure, or whatever.
I use FastMail, and I don't imagine for a second that it would act any more ethically if it were in the same position of market dominance.
Re: Don’t Mess with The Google
#94This really seems like it needs to be regulated in law. For telephone companies, there are rules about when they may disconnect you, e.g. the Arizona Utilities Division write > f I am unable to pay my entire bill, what can I do to maintain local dial tone? > The Arizona Administrative Code specifically states that a telephone company may not disconnect a customer for failure to pay an unregulated portion of their bil…
Fastmail. I'm just a regular (paying) customer, not a business or anything. I've opened a small number of tickets, one or two of the RTFM variety. I've always got a human response and satisfaction, even a "here, let me RTFM that for you." I can't imagine being locked out of my fastmail account for anything other than abuse of my fastmail account . Or not paying my bill.
Just chiming in to say I also use FastMail and love it. The only thing I wish they did differently is offer SMS 2FA. (Yeah, I know about the downsides. I am a normal person who doesn't need extreme security.)
Re: Don’t Mess with The Google
#95We have to stop being naive about our email accounts. My recommendation is to buy a domain name use that as the primary email. It may cost in total around $100/year but it is definitely worth it.
How do you figure the cost would come to $100?
Re: Don’t Mess with The Google
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even under the worst lease violations you can think of, it is illegal for a landlord to keep your stuff. They can throw it out on the curb, but they cannot keep it. Google not only cut off services, they cut off access to remove users' content. I don't see how that is defensible.
They cut off access to a COPY of a users content. They didn't TAKE anything from a user. If, in 2016, you're relying on a free service as your only copy of important data, you're a fool. Countless governments across the world could literally, without any notice, delete all of your data at the drop of a hat on ANY public service. See: megaupload. It's not the job of a free service provider, who literally makes 0 promi…
"You don't need to worry about keeping your data anywhere else" is the heart of Google's pitch for all their services, including Gmail, Docs, Drive, and most recently Photos. I mean, the ads for Photos are literally people feeling better knowing that their stuff is safely stored with Google.
It seems reasonable to hold Google responsible for what they say.
Re: Don’t Mess with The Google
#97> he people affected don’t have access to Gmail, Google Drive, Google Voice, or anything from Google. They don’t have any access to gift cards, bills, travel confirmations, work documents, etc that were saved in their Gmail accounts.
Yikes. That is scary. A large part of my online life is tied to Google. I was even debating getting a Project Fi phone too. Because well it is convenient and cheaper, but it would mean sink everything even deeper into Google.
For fun though, let's imagine if Google or Facebook ran a country. They would control the news you read, the apps you can install, they know where you are at every single instant (via your phone), they know all your secrets (who you talked to, what sites you visit, how often), they know who you know (contacts), Nest thermostat at home even controls how warm or cold you should be. In return you get all the super shiny and new stuff: latest technology, watches which measure your cholesterol, VR games, best email experience, unlimited archiving of your photos, really fast tear-free rendering of web pages. But if you make a wrong step your plug is pulled and you have no recourse. You go to the store to buy something, you just don't exist in the system - no access to you account. Can't travel because it refuses to route you. You can't talk to email or chat to other people because they can't reach you.
Re: Don’t Mess with The Google
#98We have to stop being naive about our email accounts. My recommendation is to buy a domain name use that as the primary email. It may cost in total around $100/year but it is definitely worth it.
You can register a domain for ~$15/yr from a registrar like Gandi, and they will include several email accounts. Anyone who cares about their online presence should do this.
Re: Don’t Mess with The Google
#99The world's growing dependence on mega-services provided by the likes of Google is why I started the Free Data Foundation.
The goal of the project is to support OSS that can replace "free" services that subsist on our data. Interestingly enough the maiden project is tentatively called Tmail (short for torrent mail).
It works somewhat like TOR in that it will depend on volunteers to host nodes that will communicate with existing email providers (outlook, gmail, yahoo, etc) and relay the mail over 80 to RPis preloaded with MDA (mail delivery agent) software.
The goal is be able to expand the service to allow people to sign up for email accounts without running their own software (a la gmail).
It gets way deeper than that, but I'll leave it there. You can follow the project at https://github.com/freedatafound/. I've also bought http://freedatafoundation.org but there's currently nothing there.
Re: Don’t Mess with The Google
#100This really seems like it needs to be regulated in law. For telephone companies, there are rules about when they may disconnect you, e.g. the Arizona Utilities Division write > f I am unable to pay my entire bill, what can I do to maintain local dial tone? > The Arizona Administrative Code specifically states that a telephone company may not disconnect a customer for failure to pay an unregulated portion of their bil…
Fastmail. I'm just a regular (paying) customer, not a business or anything. I've opened a small number of tickets, one or two of the RTFM variety. I've always got a human response and satisfaction, even a "here, let me RTFM that for you." I can't imagine being locked out of my fastmail account for anything other than abuse of my fastmail account . Or not paying my bill.
I might have to switch at some point. It is stories like these that are freaking me out. Were there any instances of them being DoS-ed or you not getting emails from others?
I would also be afraid one day if Google sees people fleeing to them, they'd come in and buy them. I'd almost whish there was a public trust or non-profit who would run an email server. Post office is a government service (for better or for worse), email is a bit like what regular mail was 100 years ago.