201–210 of 720 posts
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He appears to be in NZ. Yes, I find that crazy.
Nah, NZ doesn't have a national ID.
Edit: yes NZ has RealMe but there isn’t much use for it (in my xp).
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Would forwarding continue to work if your account is disabled or terminated? That doesn't seem likely? I wish there was a way to pay for Google (such as Google One) and it meant Google wouldn't ban your Gmail account. Period. However from reading HN anecdotes, it seems like they don't care about you (even if you're a paying customer). I realize this could feel like extortion, but it would be well worth the peace of m…
That's why you need to own your domain. When they lock you out, you setup a new mailbox elsewhere and point your domain to it. That covers new mail. And the archives are still accessible because you've been forwarding mail all along.
It should be illegal. Companies that provide public utility type services should be obliged to follow certain laws, one of them being that they are not allowed to shut people out from their own data. They could provide the service as read-only on alleged breach of terms (allowing the user to migrate) for example. Shutting them out completely: just no.
Getting locked out of Google is a legit risk that I have: I'll loose most of my personal & professional data because of it: Emails (Gmail), Files & Photos (Drive), Contacts, Calendar... Google already offer a way to download backups from Google Takeout. But this isn't enough because: 1- I have to remember to download an up-to-date backup myself. 2- I have to store the backup somewhere. 3- Retrieving the data is cumbe…
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…
I recommend to use your own email domain with it. If you're ever locked out or want to switch, you can easily switch while keeping the same address.
Someone else buys the domain after me? And steals all my online accounts? (Pwd reset emails)
"They are a private company so they can do whatever they want!" - HN every single time someone banned for political reasons on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube etc. Most likely something like that happened here too. Considering Reddit now bans people for upvoting the "wrong political ideas" I can see Google banning people for a Youtube like or comment. But they are a private company and they can do whatever they want!
Have you got a source on that?
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> 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…
It should be illegal. Companies that provide public utility type services should be obliged to follow certain laws, one of them being that they are not allowed to shut people out from their own data. They could provide the service as read-only on alleged breach of terms (allowing the user to migrate) for example. Shutting them out completely: just no.
We got this protection with phone number porting eventually. So there’s hope, when government becomes sane again.
Perhaps we need similar for email forwarding - it's clear that the major email platforms (Google, Microsoft) can already handle mail that is simply deferred to another mail server (see partial cloud email transitions).
Perhaps we need the same for email? So a user can have a Gmail address, but receive their email elsewhere. Would still require an authenticated backend to let the user control the end destination email server, but that's the same for number portability. Telecoms operators handle that part, and each provider is regulated. For email it could be a basic login ability for the old account to enable picking the destination mail server.
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But even then you have to trust FastMail not to lock you out. Sure it's a paid service so less likely and I'm sure their customer service is better. But it doesn't fix the root issue of being dependent on one party.
Google is pretty unique here. You can have a dedicated support team at Google with a multimillion dollar account, and still be wack-a-moled by Google's automated systems. The root issue is Google. This doesn't happen with most companies. This is specific to Google's culture, which treats customers as statistics. That comes out of how Google thought about search and ads, and doesn't work for anything else. The seconda…
I'm generally against too much regulation, but given how important e-mails are (access to all sorts of accounts, important messages from clients, tax, etc.), this is a case where a certain service level needs to be mandatory, e.g., unlocking within few hours.