Privacy is when it is known somebody is doing something but not knowing what/how.
Anonimity is when it is known something is being done but not knowing by who.
Reasons to not use your own domain for email
41–50 of 227 posts
Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once you have Hide My Email set up, you don't have to log in again. I just forward to another email account that is not on iCloud. The unique email address I generated is saved in 1Password.
You have to pay for icloud for the rest of your life though. I personally had issues with Apple overbilling me and not fixing it, and have shifted away from icloud and it's a huge problem for me, because while most accounts will let me change my email, some accounts will not. I registered a throwaway domain for $10 and i'm using that domain that's the combination of two random english words dot com, and now I use sim…
> You have to pay for icloud for the rest of your life though.
Isn't that true for all email providers nowadays? I used to have free email inbox with my domain, but not anymore. The cheapest layer for iCloud+ is $1/month.
Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email
#43The main reasons for me that I stopped using my own domain: - some sites will just silently refuse to accept addresses on unknown domains and signing up becomes impossible - worse, some sites accept it for sign up, but later on refuse to send a password reset - every time you have you write down or say out our your email address to a non-technical person, you are then obligated to host a mini Q&A on domain names and…
I've been using not one, but several email domains since '00 and never ran into any of these issues. Not a single time.
Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email
#44The main reasons for me that I stopped using my own domain: - some sites will just silently refuse to accept addresses on unknown domains and signing up becomes impossible - worse, some sites accept it for sign up, but later on refuse to send a password reset - every time you have you write down or say out our your email address to a non-technical person, you are then obligated to host a mini Q&A on domain names and…
- some sites will just silently refuse… → their problem, not yours, don't take on. - refuse to send a password reset… → is it a payed service? request moneyback, involve customer protection. is it free service? no warranty for you. don't rely on it heavily. - say out our your email address to a non-technical person… → don't connect to people who can not copy ascii letters, written or verbally. my daugther is 5, she c…
Giving in to sites refusing to take custom domains is what leads to for example self hosted email being so difficult now because the big 3 run the show and defacto control internet mail.
We should also stop "dumbing down" to a point of sacrificing security and anonymity because people are unable to take down an email address in 2023. Remember when Google and others wanted to get rid of urls and use just words because "it is too difficult for people to remember urls"?
People used to remember multiple phone numbers in their head!
Humans can learn, we should stop encouraging brain lazyness, it leads to mobs of idiots who think another man won the presidency no matter how much evidence you provide that it's not the case.
Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email
#45I've gone back and forth on this. It's frustrating there is no way to provide yourself a fully "grounded" digital footprint in the same way your financial footprint is grounded to the US legal system. AKA in a financial/legal sense if I am the victim of massive identity theft or fraud, locked out of all of my assets, I can physically go into a bank or police station and find a "throat to choke" to start making things right. But if you are completely 100% pwned online you are basically at the mercy of customer support! And email is the critical link in the identity chain. So you want to choose an email provider or domain host that has a findable throat to choke.
For me I've tried to move most of my most critical accounts to a fastmail email address. Are they perfect? Of course not. But I pay them, so I know they won't capriciously ban my account without warning or recourse. I know if I file a support ticket someone will see it and get me on the right track.
Moving to my own domain is tempting but as far as I can tell just adds another layer of trouble to this. Am I confident namecheap support will come through in a Very Bad Scenario? Kind of? Not really?
Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email
#46The main reasons for me that I stopped using my own domain: - some sites will just silently refuse to accept addresses on unknown domains and signing up becomes impossible - worse, some sites accept it for sign up, but later on refuse to send a password reset - every time you have you write down or say out our your email address to a non-technical person, you are then obligated to host a mini Q&A on domain names and…
I have had my firstname lastname domain (.dk as I am danish) since 2001 and have never seen a website refusing my domain or refuse to send a password reset.
I also have not had issues with giving the address to a non-technical person, only issue I have had is that the risk of spelling mistakes are higher than @gmail.com
Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email
#47I agree. Using a custom email sounds cool first, but sucks in real life when you have to give someone your mail address and they don't understand how to write it, what it means, how it works, and when it is rejected by the system they're typing it into. That's the reason I'm migrating back to a normal mail address.
The older I get the more I kinda regret getting a custom domain for my email. I do like that I can take my email with me if I want to change service provider, or I can do the hosting myself, if I really wanted to. It's nice to be in control, but sometimes, sometimes it would be nice to just have a stupid generic email account and not having to bother with hosting companies.
There is a certain silly charm of being presented with a 20 year old Yahoo! Mail account or someone who insist that their Hotmail address is just fine. These people do not worry about email and that must be really nice.
One word of warning regarding when using a custom domain: Be really careful about giving out email address to others. I have my own, that of my sister and one for a friend that I haven't seen i five years. The coordination required when/if you need to move providers due to e.g. cost or policy changes can be a nightmare.
Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using Google Mail sure, but using Google's domain sure as heck does. I cringe every time I see a business card printed with a gmail.com or similar, or on the side of someone's van. If you can go through the effort of registering a business and having a professional looking logo plastered all over your vans, business card etc, you can almost certainly register a domain for your email.
I think that's a rather geeky perspective. No non-technical person ever cares.
They'll care after they accidentally email their entire company's accounts to some random gmail account after receiving a phishing 'hi, I'm your new accountant at audit_firm_you're_using' email.
If you don't use a corporate domain for your company's correspondence your customers have _no way_ to tell who's a legitimate employee of your firm and who's spoofing when they get an email.
Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email
#49One of my mail domain's can only be registered for a year at a time, which really bothers me, I feel like it leaves the risk of losing it higher than others which I can register for longer. I don't know if there's a way around it, but for the record, it's a .es domain, and I am not Spanish, nor do I live in Spain.
The Danish .dk domains have a nice feature, if you don't pay then they aren't freed right away, they are "quarantined" for a few months. In this period you're the only one who can renew it.
Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately if you stop paying for fastmail or your Google account becomes inactive, they terminate your account and the email address becomes available for a new user. I think the concern that your email address is subject to takeover is valid, but unfortunately relying on generic domains isn't the solution. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12418290?hl=en
Citing from Google‘s recent email on account inactivity: ”After a Google Account is deleted, the Gmail address for the deleted account cannot be used again when creating a new Google Account“
For Fastmail, I could not quickly find their policy.
However, I do occasionally receive some emails on my fastmail user address which are not my own, which may indicate that Fastmail user addresses become available after unsubscribing.
The emails are from Steam, with 2FA login codes; I assume they only send those with prior email verification. With only the email address it is apparently not possible to contact Steam and tell them this is not my account (you need to login to contact support, or know a username). The danger here is that many websites (not just Steam) assume an email address is "forever", and the same address can not be used by anybody else.