We need a Let's Encrypt for identity. A nonprofit that does nothing except provide social login without mining your data. It's wild that the de facto identity provider of the planet is an advertising company.
How likely is losing a Google account?
221–230 of 305 posts
Re: How likely is losing a Google account?
#222I'm not convinced there's a problem but only as long as you own your own domain. Using gmail (as in blah@gmail.com) is potentially dangerous, either from "Google decided to lock you out of your account" to "Google has started charging $X a month [more than you can afford] for Gmail".
I was an early Gmail adopter, and have hundreds of logins that use my gmail address. I'm now in the process of getting sensible and moving all my logins across to a domain I own. It's still using Google (as in Gmail / workspace) - the free edition - but once I'm done I won't be beholden to Google if there's a lockout or whatever. Pain in the ass though it'd be to move mail servers and to lose my archive (well, any bits I haven't downloaded / synced via IMAP), I'll be in a much better position to Do Things if I can just repoint the domain to Some New Email Service in the future.
It's a pain, but I'm doing it. Slowly.
Re: How likely is losing a Google account?
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The veins of treasure to be mined from within the user's emails are vast and endless. https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en-GB > We will not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads. the veins dried up back in 2017.
only if you believe them.. I dont.
> only if you believe them.. I dont.
And I don’t believe that PHP is the best ;-)
Re: How likely is losing a Google account?
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I can reach a human" is a huge security vuln. I don't want people social engineering my identity provider.
I'll take the limited risk. I've had to contact Fastmail support and it was a breath of fresh air. It's a bit absurd that something so fundamental as email has essentially no support from a company as large as Google; it's not a bug-free product. I suppose eliminating humans is a security win, but HN is full of stories of AI systems failing and banning accounts for essentially nothing. Not having a human to appeal to…
> AI systems failing and banning accounts for essentially nothing.
The strongest statement you can make about the standard HN Google account outrage post is that the complainant is unaware of or unwilling to admit to the behavior that got their account suspended. Drawing the conclusion that all such complaints are false positives is not warranted by the evidence.
Re: How likely is losing a Google account?
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
> LG wasn't giving their TVs away. No, but they're selling them at cost, and using monetization tactics to make up for that over the long term.
Well, that's lg off the list then. Thanks, that saved me a bunch of time, money, and eyestrain.
Pretty much every modern TV manufacturer does this. Don't kid yourself into thinking it's just one company.
Re: How likely is losing a Google account?
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
"is inherently more secure than one that sells your eyeballs to advertisers in exchange for giving you free stuff. " Not necessarily, and in fact this case I would disagree. I trust Google's security 10x more than that of FastMail. The 'advertising company' reaps in billions of $ with which they can get all sorts of good engineers for 0-day research, exploits, updates. They have a lot more of a reputation to defend.…
gary_0 seems to be using "security" to mean "sureness of their continued existence", as in "food security". I don't think there's any question that Gmail is more secure in the computing sense. > Except for the bit where they read my email and advertise to me on that basis, which is admittedly an ugly tradeoff. Iirc, Google reads your email, but explicitly says they do not use what they read to personalize your ads.
For me, the likelihood of getting locked out without recourse should also be included.
Re: How likely is losing a Google account?
#227> 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). I think this is a bit dismissive of Fastmail: in all three of the linked reports (2017, 2020, and 2022) Fastmail has apologized and reinstated the account or provided some other mitigation. Nobody is perfect, any service will have bugs causing lockouts a…
> Nobody is perfect, any service will have bugs causing lockouts and false-positive fraud claims
The HUGE difference is both Fastmail and I assume Protonmail (I only have personal experience with FM) actually have customer service departments, with real people.
Re: How likely is losing a Google account?
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 takeaway from that is to never spend more than a few quid (i.e. money I'd care about losing) on anything linked that directly to Google.
To me, a chargeback is a 'burn the bridges' moment. If a company has wronged me to the point I'm prepared to do a chargeback, then I obviously don't want anything to do with that company anymore, and I welcome them to close my account since I will never do business with them again. Why would you want to continue doing business with a company that has frustrated you to the point of doing a chargeback?
The problem is that Google is a conglomorate. You might be disappointed with their phone service or their phone store or their tv service or whatever and never want to do business again with that section of the company, but still want to keep using other parts. Maybe that sours you on the whole company, maybe not, but even if you don't want to end your ties with them, you probably want to end it on your terms, not immediately as you get your money back.
Re: How likely is losing a Google account?
#229It'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…
Any company with a business model that takes your money and gives you service is inherently more secure than one that sells your eyeballs to advertisers in exchange for giving you free stuff. The former companies have a direct incentive to keep giving you service as part of their core business. The latter are really only paying attention to the money they get from advertisers.
> Any company with a business model that takes your money and gives you service is inherently more secure
I just finished reading Postmail For Dummies. Since I'm charging $5/mo for email accounts, you'll obviously want to migrate your gmail over since my solution is so much more secure.
Re: How likely is losing a Google account?
#230I'm not convinced there's a problem but only as long as you own your own domain . Using gmail (as in blah@gmail.com) is potentially dangerous, either from "Google decided to lock you out of your account" to "Google has started charging $X a month [more than you can afford] for Gmail". I was an early Gmail adopter, and have hundreds of logins that use my gmail address. I'm now in the process of getting sensible and mo…
I did this a few years ago. It wasn't too bad and I'm happy I did it. I moved providers, too.