Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

fastmail.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 181 posts

Re: Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

#91

Post by fauigerzigerk »

hnaccount_rng wrote: post #82
deeblering4 wrote: post #79

I highly recommend scheduling a regular mbsync job to keep a local copy of your emails in sync with the imap server. With this it's easy to pick up and move to a different provider or recover from outages, account closure, etc. If you couple this with your own domain your email will be very portable.

How do you sync back your local copy of the IMAP database? I had the problem of a misconfiguration in my email rules deleting everything older than 28 days. Not a _big_ problem due to backups, but I didn’t manage to restore those as any local restore got deleted as soon as the sync with the IMAP server started

Maybe it helps to copy the messages into a new IMAP folder before resyncing.

Re: Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

#92

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

longcommonname wrote: post #90
ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't comply, which is perfectly reasonable. But they should have stopped at that. I don't know what "fixing" you're talking about.

We recently did a similar thing at the company I work for in response to similar pressures. The effort to make that change was significantly less than the continual effort required to deal with the pressures. From a cost perspective their decision makes sense, from a customer perspective less so.

Again, what pressures?

Re: Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

#93

Post by kmonsen »

yarcob wrote: post #11
ojame wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had a paid account with Fastmail for probably going on 8 years I’d say. It’s been a fantastically reliable service and the odd (perhaps 3 or 4 times) I’ve needed to reach out to support it’s always prompt and a real conversation.

I'm also a happy Fastmail customer. They actually offer customer support (at least they did a couple of years ago when I needed it). I had an issue with Fastmail where I accidentally deleted a bunch of emails, and with help from their support I was able to restore them from their backup quickly. Contrast that to Gmail, where thousands of messages suddenly disappeared from the inbox, and the only support option was a…

Gmail is required by law to really delete things the user deletes. There are guarantees around how quickly it will be done.

Re: Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

#95

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

Volundr wrote: post #89
ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ask their customers to lobby for a better legal framework Do you understand the absurd level of naïvete of this position?

I genuinely don't. Can you explain it to me?

First of all, you're a service operator, political activity of your customers is not your business.

Secondly, lobbying doesn't exist in countries with no political representation. The only political activity available in such countries are activism (not of the bureaucratic type) and sabotage, all severely punishable.

Re: Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

#96

Post by distances »

rychco wrote: post #14
mensetmanusman wrote: post #4

I wonder if the fastmail protocol could be hidden in AWS-like data streams to take an approach like telegram. If they try to block it, they shut down their entire digital business infrastructure. I have been looking for an alternative to Gmail, does anyone have recommendations? Fastmail? Proton mail? What put me over the edge is my young friend had a heart attack, went to the hospital and (during recovery) logged int…

I started using fastmail about 6 months ago and have really enjoyed it so far. My only concern is whether they’ll be around long term (10-20+ years) because it’s quickly become my default email for important stuff.

Others commented about your own domain. It's straightforward to set up, costs maybe $7 a year. You may want to look into it.

Additional bonus: use all kinds of addresses you want (me@shadyservice.domain.com) for easy blocking if an address leaks.

Re: Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

#98

Post by threatofrain »

vbezhenar wrote: post #62
abcd_f wrote: post #12

Where did all the brouhaha with Russia banning Telegram end? From what I understand it seems to be operational and rather popular there. Did the state give up or did Telegram end up “cooperating” with them?

Telegram started to collaborate with Russia and they let it live.

Where did you obtain confidence for this story?

Re: Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

#100

Post by duxup »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #60

>We have made the decision to block signups for all IP addresses we identify as coming from within Russia. We have also removed our app from the Apple and Google app stores for customers in Russia. WTF? Why would you ever do that? You said you have no legal presence in Russia, why f*ck over the users? Instead of ignoring hostile stupidity you're helping it, this is mind boggling. Sorry, I can't "feel good" about your…

I can understand Fastmail wanting to be in compliance with the law... or just not do business there.

Making a whole effort of operating in Russia, being blocked, and trying to work around that seems like a potentially endless effort. Meanwhile you're offering a service to your customers that would be pretty spotty considering all the hassle going on.

Post reply on HN