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Don’t Mess with The Google

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Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#211

Post by hellofunk »

jdietrich wrote: post #118

Rule Zero: Never rely on a URL that you don't control. Use your own domain name for your e-mail addresses. Use your own domain name for canonical links to content. If you control the URLs, you do not depend on any one provider. Rule One: If you only have one copy, you have no copies. It is an act of faith to assume that a Youtube video or a file in Google Drive will remain available, just as it's an act of faith to a…

This is the opposite advice I've heard after reading about scenarios like this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7141532

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#212

Post by hellofunk »

kinkdr wrote: post #19

We 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.

But to then you are vulnerable to poor domain registrar security:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7141532

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#214

Post by a012 »

brongondwana wrote: post #75
a3n wrote: post #64

Earlier 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…

Will Fastmail have CDN? I'm currently in Vietnam and latency to Fastmail isn't good (250ms RTT), as I connect to server that's located in US. While my home's internet service might be worse, so I hope Fastmail servers are closer.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#215

Post by barnacs »

Besides not depending on centralized (especially 'free') offerings of any single company ourselves and spreading the word, warning people with less technical insight, there are some things we can do when building services to help the average user avoid this:

- Offer at least one properly decentralized authentication option. Do not force your users to depend on google/facebook/github/whatever authentication services.

- Provide a way for registered users to change their email address and/or authentication method.

- Even on your backend, try your best to avoid locking yourself in to the services of a single provider, be it hosting, storage, email or anything. By doing so, you are not only locking in yourself, but indirectly your users as well. Prefer open source and self hosted services.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#217

Post by z3t4 »

setq wrote: post #170

First post, might as well be a cautionary tale. My father, a pretty old programmer by anyone's standards, regularly warns me of this sort of thing. He was pretty much shafted by CompuServe many years ago on a miniscule scale compared to what is possible now. He lives his life in what I previously described as a paranoid bubble of data control. Until I inevitably burned myself with Google. I have no idea what happened…

Backups! Even in the cloud era you still need backups.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#218

Post by tiatia »

"1. Don’t mess around with Google or any company that you simply can’t live without."

Wrong. Get off of google ASAP. I have my own email. Yes I pay, yes it is a little bit less convenient. But I don't have to worry about such stuff. I still use the search engine but should actually use startpage.com instead.

Gandi offers Email with domains. If you have your own domain and need email services, you can also use this guys: http://infomaniak.ch/ Less than US$20 per year. And non EU non US jurisdiction as a bonus.

There are python scripts available that back up your google email data via IMAP. I downloaded everything before I moved.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#219

Post by bad_user »

The worst thing about it is that it's almost impossible to talk to a human about the problems you're having with Google's free services. Even if this was a honest mistake, there's no human to talk to in order to correct it. And yes, you could pay for Google's G Suite (former Apps), which does have support available, but then again that locks you in, because you can't migrate purchases and connections to a free account later.

Free stuff is never free, you end up paying one way or another.

I have long since migrated off Google Apps and am paying for FastMail and Dropbox (with the 1-year history add-on), which ends up being about $243 per year, or about $20 per month. Now that's kind of expensive. Along with other recurring payments for online services, I end up paying about $38 per month for online stuff.

Now I'm being a frugal kind of guy, having suffered from poverty in the past and I'm not paying for useless shit I don't need, but if you can afford it, then allocating about $50 per month for your online independence is worth it, because the alternative is to be held hostage by companies like Google.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#220

Post by baybal2 »

perlpimp wrote: post #185
setq wrote: post #170

First post, might as well be a cautionary tale. My father, a pretty old programmer by anyone's standards, regularly warns me of this sort of thing. He was pretty much shafted by CompuServe many years ago on a miniscule scale compared to what is possible now. He lives his life in what I previously described as a paranoid bubble of data control. Until I inevitably burned myself with Google. I have no idea what happened…

Going on a tangent, there should probably be a set of universal backup formats that can be advertised as being somewhat portable. So that, if you need to can take your mail and other online business stuff elsewhere if need be. Beyond this article a user might start working for some place that does not allow external app use, but they can bring their data with, to be loaded onto the service. I guess like github and gi…

Blatant violation of the First Sale doctrine. Class action lawsuit incoming in 3..2..
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