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Google users locked out after 15 years' use

businessinsider.com

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Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#141

Post by goatinaboat »

Yolta wrote: post #115
dzhiurgis wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need better email providers. We need to stop using phone numbers as unique identifiers. We need email that has encryption built in. Which kinda suggest governments should run their own email services.

> Which kinda suggest governments should run their own email services. No, no, no, no, no, let's not go there. Small independent hosters is a more compelling solution.

No, no, no, no, no, let's not go there. Small independent hosters is a more compelling solution.

Yes, our culture is perfectly capable of delivering essential (and nonessential but nonetheless everyday) services through regulated private independent companies. Typically some sort of exclusive license is granted, yet to maintain that license certain standards must be adhered to. You can see a dozen examples of this on any high street, any business handling food for example.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#142

Post by kioleanu »

mjochim wrote: post #123
afandian wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used a custom domain + gmail for the last decade. Earier this year I got sufficiently spooked and decided to switch email. The migration to fastmail.fm , including a decade of old mail messages, was flawless (if slow, but it's a lot of data!). I highly recommend this route.

Did you upload all the messages from your client to fastmail or were they copied directly from Google to fastmail?

You just connect your Google account in the Fastmail settings and they set everything automatically

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#145

Post by hilbert42 »

hnlmorg wrote: post #98
stiray wrote: post #30

Welcome to vendor locked-in world where you have willing-fully decided to become prisoners in exchange for few sweets that you dont really need. I hope you dont also own some google router or even better, "home security" device. This would make it a real pain. I am explaining this to people since the birth of gmail, but no one listens. Let me think for a moment, what would happen if google does this to me... [x] No g…

> I hope you dont also own some google router or even better, "home security" device. This would make it a real pain. I am explaining this to people since the birth of gmail, but no one listens. > Let me think for a moment, what would happen if google does this to me... > {lots of stuff that is impossible for the average person} If you're making the same comments to those who "don't listen" then I can see why. Honest…

"The problem is, hosting your own email is actually really hard. Not only much harder to set up than it should be... "

This is the very crux of the problem. We need newer protocols so this is dead easy for anyone to do but I don't see it happening anytime soon. As Google and other Big Tech are on internet standards bodies they'd almost certainty oppose it as a more distributed internet would be bad if not ultimately devastating for their businesses.

Unfortunately, we naively let the Trojan horse into the internet years ago now we're paying a terrible penalty for our foolhardiness.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#146

Post by jmnicolas »

stiray wrote: post #30

Welcome to vendor locked-in world where you have willing-fully decided to become prisoners in exchange for few sweets that you dont really need. I hope you dont also own some google router or even better, "home security" device. This would make it a real pain. I am explaining this to people since the birth of gmail, but no one listens. Let me think for a moment, what would happen if google does this to me... [x] No g…

I'm in the process of Degoogling my life so I have installed GrapheneOS on my phone and use FDroid as an app store.

It works but I have the impression of living in the dark ages:

- I had to ask my contacts to install Signal on their phones, some just didn't follow up (we were having long conversations on WhatsApp the week before), some don't even see my messages. I receive much less messages than before, I'm left out of the cool conversations happening in WhatsApp groups).

- I thought Google's keyboard could use some improvements, but the AOSP one is much worse.

- I can't use my banking app, and their mobile web app doesn't work with KeepassDX so I have to manually enter my account infos each time.

- notifications are hit and miss. The reminder app that I found on FDroid didn't fire a reminder this morning. I had to get another Clock app, the AOSP one insisted to make an audible notification 1.5h before any alarm (it was silent on Google's).

- email clients: FairEmail is good but lacks ergonomy.K-9 mail is a joke. (I like to separate my email accounts in separate clients).

- the icons are ugly and I didn't find any way to change them.

All in all I'm not exactly living the dream right now. I don't use social medias (except YouTube on my desktop where I can block ads) I think I would have a much harder time if I had to use web apps to connect to social medias.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#147

Post by grandpoobah »

This article finally prompted me to do what I should've done a long time ago, which is to create a Fastmail account and begin importing my Gmail into it. I've seen this story far too many times, and no longer will I say "yeah but it'll never happen to me".

Setting up the import was insanely easy, and my Fastmail account is now configured to enable me to send using my Gmail address from directly within Fastmail. Plus after the import is finished, it will still periodically bring over any new emails received to the Gmail account.

Fuck you Google.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#148

Post by Daniel_sk »

grandpoobah wrote: post #147

This article finally prompted me to do what I should've done a long time ago, which is to create a Fastmail account and begin importing my Gmail into it. I've seen this story far too many times, and no longer will I say "yeah but it'll never happen to me". Setting up the import was insanely easy, and my Fastmail account is now configured to enable me to send using my Gmail address from directly within Fastmail. Plus…

Yes, the import is actually extremely easy - basically one click where you authorize Fastmail to connect to your Gmail account.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#149

Post by jmnicolas »

doctor_eval wrote: post #114
classics2 wrote: post #97

Just don’t do it. Run your own domain and inbound email server. It’s so cheap it basically costs nothing at this point.

Well, only if you set aside the cost of the education you went through in order to be able to do all that stuff... while your advice is fine for the HN crowd, unfortunately this problem affects everybody. Better advice IMO is to tell people to use a smaller provider, like Fastmail.

This HN crowd member don't want to bother with the trouble. I see email as postcards (everybody can read them) and act accordingly.

Since I never trusted Google, I use a well known mail provider that I pay for.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#150

Post by grumple »

Thanks for the reminder to finish switching my accounts over to Fastmail. There are too many of these stories to trust google. There’s also something nice about having a financial relationship with a company providing you a service, rather than having them mining your data to sell things to you or about you.
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