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Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

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31–40 of 400 posts

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#31
post #3

I remember when I was horrified that apps would ask for (or not…) all my contacts. But then I realized most people on my contacts probably wouldn’t say no so someone could easily use that information to guesstimate my contacts by using everyone else’s contacts.

Did that realisation make you less horrified?

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#33
post #22

Let's say theoretically I did a gdpr request to Google to delete my emails, do they have to delete the counterparty copy?

From Article 4 of the GDPR:

> ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;

As I (entirely non-lawyerly) interpret it, you could not do a GDPR request to delete the counterparty emails, because those are things written by you, not information about you. However, an email in which you state "I broke my leg today." would be personal data, because it can be connected to your identity and is information relating to you.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#34
post #9

For me, owning my own email domain is far more about control than privacy. I currently use some MX and SMTP trickery to forward all of my email to Gmail, effectively using Gmail as my 'email client' - but because the domain is mine, I can change that without too much headache, unlike if I were just using an @gmail.com address.

You don’t own a domain name you rent it. If you ever forget to renew it or you are unable to renew it for some reason then it becomes available for anyone else to register. At that point the new owner can receive all your email and potentially access any accounts which use that email as 2FA. I’m not saying you should never do this but it’s not a silver bullet.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#35
Email is one technology with two quite different use cases: reply and noreply. The former is the sending and receiving of regular correspondence. The latter is the identity stuff and is the majority of my traffic: things like bills, receipts, tickets, reminders, security alerts, login confirmations, etc.

In 2022 I’m more worried about an unregulated company monopolising the noreply part. It’s an enormous part of my life.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#36
post #15
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you offering to pay for them to host their own streaming solution and volunteering to handle technical support for users who have trouble with it? This gotcha-game is tiring. People don't have to like Amazon to realize that they and YouTube are the only practical game in town for free live streaming.

Debian manages to do global streaming for DebConf every year using only libre software and VMs running Debian at cloud providers. Seems like this is their setup using ansible: https://debconf-video-team.pages.debian.net/ansible/simple_s...

DebConf videos are mirrored to YouTube as well: https://www.youtube.com/c/DebConfVideos

I've never watched it live because discovering the DebConf streams is extremely difficult. I've primarily watched the videos from YouTube.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#37
post #26

Having your own email/domain isn’t about privacy. Email has become essentially the key to almost everything in modern life. If I lose access to my email I lose access to basically everything I own and it would be a massive hassle to switch emails. Banks, schools, apps, etc. Often times these services won’t even let you change to a new email if you don’t have access to an existing one. Some use email as 2factor. It’s…

Using your own domain also has advantages in terms of being able to use aliases for different websites so (when, not if) an address gets leaked you can > /dev/null it.

If you're cheap like me you can give family members their own subdomain so everyone can have aliases for the cost of a single domain.

It's sad to think back on myself nearly two decades ago when Gmail first launched as invitation service and I thought I was being smart by not paying for my own domain, little did I know how evil Google would turn out to be in terms of locking people out of their own accounts with no recourse.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#38
post #24
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's saying the @gmail.com domain is useless to him, because it he gets so much spam from it. I could certainly see that being the case, and if you can block the whole domain and whitelist the few contacts you actually have, it probably could work decently well.

Yep, exactly. I was also wondering if I am the only one seeing this. Very large uptick of @gmail.com spam in my inbox.

I experienced it maybe a couple of months ago. Then it went away. Since so many use gmail, it's only logical for the spammers to focus on playing gmail filters and one obvious factor would be using a gmail address as the source.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#39
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian manages to do global streaming for DebConf every year using only libre software and VMs running Debian at cloud providers. Seems like this is their setup using ansible: https://debconf-video-team.pages.debian.net/ansible/simple_s...

DebConf videos are mirrored to YouTube as well: https://www.youtube.com/c/DebConfVideos I've never watched it live because discovering the DebConf streams is extremely difficult. I've primarily watched the videos from YouTube.

Hmm, my memory tells me there was just a web page you could visit to watch them, plus links if you wanted to watch in an external media player. Post-conference you can look through the schedule to watch individual talks.

Re: Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

#40
post #10

google/gmail is also one of the principal agents which declares by fiat "your own domain self-run mail is spam because I think its spam" which then propagates to other mail providers. SPF/DKIM no matter: if they decide it's spammy, un-doing this decision is appeal to a star chamber you cannot interact with directly.

By what mechanism do you believe this information "propagates" to other mail operators?
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