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Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

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Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#91

Post by zh3 »

I too run my own mail server, using a mixed approach of a dumb cloud server as a point of presence on the public internet and a private server at home as the actual email store. That gets the benefit on being a non-consumer presence as far as the internet is concerned, but with all personal data stored locally.

With a little practice and experience, it's not difficult for those with technical skills to host their own email on a cheap rented server (along with a personal website etc). Buy a suitable domain, host at a reputable supplier on a dedicated host (i.e. IP) and there should be few problems (test with free accounts from the bit tech outfits).

Even nicer is to use Dovecot for IMAP either locally or remote. I run it locally with fetchmail to periodically (or on demand) grab email from the public server, with a little utility that lists the remote headers first so I can decide which/whether any are worth even downloading and reading - quite often it's a single click to delete everything unread.

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#92

Post by fuzzy2 »

dusted wrote: post #79
somat wrote: post #25

It is a bit overkill, but the closest you can get to owning your online identity is to "own" your own domain. sarcastiquotes used because you don't really own a domain you only rent it. I run my own mail server because I am a sys-admin and running a mail-server is something I do for fun. but the amount of agency you gain once you have a domain is staggering. people without a domain are pretty much second class net ci…

I run my own mail server as well, on my own domain, own server, physically present in my home. It's increasingly becoming a hassle.. Especially sending mail from a "consumer" line is tricky, they block outgoing port 25 and no longer really provide a relay host for you to go through either.. I basically had to infiltrate my current ISP to get access to people in netops and gaslight them into configuring reverse-dns an…

You could always use a service like Mailgun to work around problems like that. It could help with IP/network reputation problems, too. I think that’s a reasonable option if it enables running a mail server at home.

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#93

Post by Falkon1313 »

netmonk wrote: post #56

Interesting that nobody question the core concept of online identity. In real world it is useless. Same in the internet. The axiom of online identity is useless and only exists for the sole purpose of control by capitalist cybernetics

I think it's especially useful, largely because it's easy to have multiple IDs online, for different aspects of your life.

And for the most part, they can be as pseudonymous as you want them to be, or they can be linked directly to your real-world ID, if you want that.

Those things give you control, instead of others.

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#94

Post by Timshel »

ezoe wrote: post #47
somat wrote: post #25

It is a bit overkill, but the closest you can get to owning your online identity is to "own" your own domain. sarcastiquotes used because you don't really own a domain you only rent it. I run my own mail server because I am a sys-admin and running a mail-server is something I do for fun. but the amount of agency you gain once you have a domain is staggering. people without a domain are pretty much second class net ci…

How do you own a domain? If you rely on a registrar, it just move the identity owner from an email provider to a registrar. Real overkill method is own a TLD. It's unrealistic for an individual though.

Big difference you can fransfer your domain to another registrar if you are unhappy with it.

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#95

Post by colordrops »

somat wrote: post #25

It is a bit overkill, but the closest you can get to owning your online identity is to "own" your own domain. sarcastiquotes used because you don't really own a domain you only rent it. I run my own mail server because I am a sys-admin and running a mail-server is something I do for fun. but the amount of agency you gain once you have a domain is staggering. people without a domain are pretty much second class net ci…

what is the safest registrar? If for instance you own a domain with a TLD managed by a shady jurisdiction, it may not be so secure, right? What's the safest TLD? Other than .com

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#96

Post by cfn »

Falkon1313 wrote: post #83
somat wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

once you have a domain you now have the ability to own stuff online. that is, independent of any corporation. The main benefit this gives your average person is the ability to move email around between server providers. but you can now have a web presence that is not (facebook, twitter, hackernews). nothing against sites, they are fine, but it is nice to have an online existance that is independent of them. Unfortuna…

It's good for having your own website. That's super easy to host and use. It's quite another thing for email. While it might not be that difficult to set up a basic email server, but to actually get it set up all correctly, and secure, and whitelisted, and get anything else on the 'net to actually interact with it is a little less trivial. And an email server that can't effectively send email (that won't be ditched a…

You can host your email with your own domain with one of several services that take care of all the details (mailgun, fastmail, protonmail, etc), If you have problems with the provider you change your domain configuration to a different provider. Does ot solve all the issues but it is more flexible.

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#97

Post by afandian »

lisper wrote: post #62
imgabe wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be like phone numbers where your area code for the rest of your life is wherever you lived when you first got a phone.

You mean like it actually is today with mobile phones?

This may be how it is in the States, but in the UK all mobiles phones start with 07 (other area residential codes start 01, 02 etc).

I always found it weird that the US numbering system assumes that mobile phones are static. Must be some weird technical debt buried somewhere.

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#98

Post by colordrops »

kingds wrote: post #87
somat wrote: post #25

It is a bit overkill, but the closest you can get to owning your online identity is to "own" your own domain. sarcastiquotes used because you don't really own a domain you only rent it. I run my own mail server because I am a sys-admin and running a mail-server is something I do for fun. but the amount of agency you gain once you have a domain is staggering. people without a domain are pretty much second class net ci…

but if you stop renting from the registrar then whoever rents the domain next gets access to your email. seems like a horrible solution to this problem. at least i can be reasonably confident that google will never recycle my email address and send all incoming mail to a rando.

Being in control of your own destiny entails more risk.

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#100

Post by colordrops »

hamstergene wrote: post #46
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #9

Another solution that the article doesn't mention: separate the email address from the email provider. It really is the domain name that is your legal identity. Make it as easy for people to register a personal domain name as it is for them to sign up for free email so they can switch from Gmail to Hotmail to Protonmail without changing their email address. Edit: We then need a standard for discoverable DNS settings…

But what credentials do you use to log into the personal domain name provider, to manage it? Another email? Unless there is state-guaranteed ownership of a domain name, this will remain to be chicken-and-egg problem: to manage a domain one needs an account with an email, and to have an independent email one needs a domain. Even then, moving between countries is normal now which poses a huge challenge to the concept o…

This is the most important comment in this entire post/thread. This is what needs to be addressed to truly solve the problem. I don't know how to solve it other than perhaps using a token on a blockchain to indicate ownership of a domain.
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