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Reasons to not use your own domain for email

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Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#71

Post by bboygravity »

ghusto wrote: post #67
sschueller wrote: post #2

I strongly disagree. - Google has on multiple occasions terminated accounts for no reason with no recourse. You loose access you can't do anything. If you have your own domain you can at least set it up somewhere else. How many website would you need to update with your new email and how would you get thay extra factor mail? - If I die I don't care if someone else reads my mail, I'm dead. Also you can add a dead man'…

> Also you can add a dead man's switch This is something I've struggled to find a solution for. Do you have any suggestions? The best I've come up with is a safe with enough information to provide access to my password manager, but obviously this makes me pretty uncomfortable. I could hand it over to a lawyer as part of my will, maybe?

Bitwarden has this feature

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#72

Post by rekoil »

The argument is mainly that "when you're dead you won't be able to renew the domain and someone can then take over your accounts".

That argument can be turned around and argue the opposite, I feel very good knowing that while I'm alive I'm in control of ensuring my domain remains under my control.

If I feel like I'm about to expire, I guess I'll probably renew for 10 years or something. Actually, that's a good idea, I'm gonna do that now, and just keep adding a year every year anyway, that way if I can't renew anymore, it's always at minimum mine for the coming 10 years.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#73

Post by buildfocus »

ghusto wrote: post #67
sschueller wrote: post #2

I strongly disagree. - Google has on multiple occasions terminated accounts for no reason with no recourse. You loose access you can't do anything. If you have your own domain you can at least set it up somewhere else. How many website would you need to update with your new email and how would you get thay extra factor mail? - If I die I don't care if someone else reads my mail, I'm dead. Also you can add a dead man'…

> Also you can add a dead man's switch This is something I've struggled to find a solution for. Do you have any suggestions? The best I've come up with is a safe with enough information to provide access to my password manager, but obviously this makes me pretty uncomfortable. I could hand it over to a lawyer as part of my will, maybe?

Bitwarden has built in emergency access: https://bitwarden.com/help/emergency-access/

That coves these kinds of cases reasonably imo: you can invite somebody, and then that person can later request access when that's necessary. That sends you a notification, and they're granted access if you don't object within a preconfigured time window.

Obviously there's some trust required and/or a sufficiently long window, but it's one of the better solutions I've seen.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#74

Post by vidarh »

EspressoGPT wrote: post #30

I 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.

I've had my firstname @ my lastname .com for 25+ years now, and it's never been more tedious than repeating it once. People deal with other domains in e-mail addresses all the time.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#75

Post by vidarh »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #16

The 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 co-founded a vanity e-mail provider around 2000, and we 1) registered about 60,000 domains that we provided e-mail for, and we never had problems like that despite tens of thousands of those domains being with then-obscure ccTLDs, 2) a bit later launched the .name top-level domain, and for that we had some very limited initial teething problems because people back then still stupidly used regexes that assumed tld's could only be 2-3 characters. Aside from that it was not a problem, and it resolved itself more than 20 years ago.

I'n the 25+ years of having my own personal domain this has never been an issue for anything but really obscure TLDs unless your mail host fails to stay off blacklists.

With respect to saying it out loud, I occasionally have to repeat my e-mail address once, but that's usually all it takes; we must be dealing with very different people.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#76

Post by vidarh »

EspressoGPT wrote: post #66
nicolaslem wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very surprising as even my aging non-technical mother uses a custom domain and never complained once that she had her email address refused somewhere.

I recently gave my .io mail to a bank and it was rejected by their system.

While stupid, that's more likely to be because of the TLD than anything general with custom domains. I can guarantee that your bank deals with thousands of different "custom" domains.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#77

Post by melx »

On topic of death.

Look into setting up "lasting power of attorney" (LPA), or your country's equivalent.

When you're no longer here, probably the last thing your spouse/children/family will care about is a bloody domain and its associated email accounts.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#79

Post by Gareth321 »

sshine wrote: post #56
sschueller wrote: post #2

I strongly disagree. - Google has on multiple occasions terminated accounts for no reason with no recourse. You loose access you can't do anything. If you have your own domain you can at least set it up somewhere else. How many website would you need to update with your new email and how would you get thay extra factor mail? - If I die I don't care if someone else reads my mail, I'm dead. Also you can add a dead man'…

The day I worried "What if Google just shuts down my email account with no recourse?" is the day I started migrating my authentication to my own domain email address. Choosing a registrar with proper security in place, this is probably the safest while you are alive.

I’ve read so many accounts of users and whole companies being permanently shut out of their Google accounts that I couldn’t justify the risk any longer. Google genuinely does not care. The number of critical services which rely on our email address is really difficult to grasp until one goes through the exercise of converting to their own domain. Banks. Trading platforms. Phones and computers. Windows. Game consoles. Steam. Google (Maps, YouTube). Cloud storage. Social media. Business applications. Communications like WhatsApp and Teams. Thousands more forums and services you’ve signed up with over the decades. As more services utilise 2FA, all of those are at risk without access to the email account. Even if you can log in, good luck changing settings, passwords, or the email address.

Everyone should buy and use their own domain. Losing access to Gmail is catastrophic. We’re talking hundreds of hours of effort and permanently lost access to irretrievable data, services, contacts, correspondence, one’s digital identity, and even money.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#80

Post by threatofrain »

luguenth wrote: post #14
sschueller wrote: post #2

I strongly disagree. - Google has on multiple occasions terminated accounts for no reason with no recourse. You loose access you can't do anything. If you have your own domain you can at least set it up somewhere else. How many website would you need to update with your new email and how would you get thay extra factor mail? - If I die I don't care if someone else reads my mail, I'm dead. Also you can add a dead man'…

About not being worried, that someone could read your mail in the case you're dead: Always bear in mind you're not writing mails to yourself. The other party writing mails with you, might not be that happy with third parties reading their mails. Privacy is not only about you

IMO the privacy we might discuss in terms of government or community intrusion is different from the privacy you expect from friends with regards to discretion. If I send you an unprofessional email, it ought be your prerogative to make a judgment call for disclosure.
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