21–30 of 305 posts
This reminds me, again, that I should look into setting up my own home mail server. Is there an off the shelf solution for this? I don't mind setting up another PC as a server for this, but how hard is it?
(It has been a while since I looked in to this, so things may have changed)
This reminds me, again, that I should look into setting up my own home mail server. Is there an off the shelf solution for this? I don't mind setting up another PC as a server for this, but how hard is it?
If, perhaps, you decide against self-hosting, but still want a reasonably good solution, consider owning your domain but buying a hosted mail service. You own the MX records, so you can point it to a service and change it in the future if you need to (without fiddling with setting up a new mail host). Say you use XYZ mail provider, but they shut down for business. You can buy mail hosting from someone else within a d…
Okay, so it's not very likely. What made me transition away from Google/Gmail as my identity provider was pondering the question: How screwed am I if I get locked out of my Google account? The answer: Well, if you're on Hacker News, you may have a chance of reaching a human. But if you broke a policy, good luck. I'm paying $5/mo. for that to not be that screwed. (I have family who got locked out. It does happen.)
> I'm paying $5/mo. for that to not be that screwed (I have family who got locked out. It does happen.) But the article precisely addresses that: For example, in HN discussions people will often recommend Fastmail or Protonmail, but they've had their problems too (FM: 2017, 2020, 2022, PM: 2018, 2019, 2021). Especially given that these are much smaller services I'm not convinced that the risk is lower there. Any syst…
Not sure if this counts as "policy reason" for the article's purposes; he sort of dismisses payment disputes. I could argue either side about whether a suspension like this is reasonable. In the Google Pixel case the chargebacks mostly start because Google outsources hardware support to a bunch of unreliable third parties. Some of whom seem to eitiher lose or just be stealing customers' phones when they are sent in for repair.
My takeaway was that if I was ever in a dispute over a couple of hundred bucks for Google, I would not risk a chargeback for fear of retaliation. My account is one of Google's very first, when I worked there I launched one of the first products to ever use a Google account. I have no faith that as an outsider now I'd ever get a reasonable hearing over an account dispute.
Okay, so it's not very likely. What made me transition away from Google/Gmail as my identity provider was pondering the question: How screwed am I if I get locked out of my Google account? The answer: Well, if you're on Hacker News, you may have a chance of reaching a human. But if you broke a policy, good luck. I'm paying $5/mo. for that to not be that screwed. (I have family who got locked out. It does happen.)
> I'm paying $5/mo. for that to not be that screwed (I have family who got locked out. It does happen.) But the article precisely addresses that: For example, in HN discussions people will often recommend Fastmail or Protonmail, but they've had their problems too (FM: 2017, 2020, 2022, PM: 2018, 2019, 2021). Especially given that these are much smaller services I'm not convinced that the risk is lower there. Any syst…
There is a strong consensus forming in the tech community that core services like email or authentication should be delegated to google only as a last resort.
Okay, so it's not very likely. What made me transition away from Google/Gmail as my identity provider was pondering the question: How screwed am I if I get locked out of my Google account? The answer: Well, if you're on Hacker News, you may have a chance of reaching a human. But if you broke a policy, good luck. I'm paying $5/mo. for that to not be that screwed. (I have family who got locked out. It does happen.)
Hackernews made me realize manual recovery should never be a thing. My first account was taken over by a scammer even with a unique password. I suspect the admins of this site 'manually recovered' my account and gave it to them. The last message of my first account, areallygoodname, is spam. I couldn't be bothered getting the admins to recover it back. I just took the lesson that hackernews is really insecure due to…
It's true that every service has to deal with the same policy and lockout problems, but that doesn't lead to the conclusion that the risk is the same. I pay for FastMail because 1. if something goes wrong, I can reach a human without needing to write a viral blog post first. Other services pay for a customer service department. 2. I trust FastMail more to not shut down their product because they got bored. Sure Gmail…
Even if you are storing passwords in Google account you should be able to reset all of them since you have access to the email.