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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

#81

Post by acatton »

> Can you imagine if someone in the future got a hold of gmail.com?

Good luck trying to talk to a human at Google the day you get locked out of your gmail.com account for "suspicious activity" (See https://uk.pcmag.com/old-hosted-email-providers/133220/not-e... )

> One of my concerns is that, if I were unable to renew my domain (e.g., in case of death), someone else could register it and start receiving my emails. This is a serious issue because your email account is as good as a password due to most websites using it as a way to reset your password.

Gmail won't help you here, since they will deactivate your account after two years of inactivity (See https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12418290 "When your Google Account has not been used within a 2-year period, your Google Account, that is then deemed inactive, and all of its content and data may be deleted")

You could argue that, until now, Google has promised to prevent deactivated account from being reused. https://webapps.stackexchange.com/a/90016

But with custom emails, one can do what I do. I have a registrar which allow for a pre-paid balance. I prepaid €500, this will allow automatic renewals a few years after my death.

Also, using your own domain for email allows you to change providers when they jack up the prices on you with little notice. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36321783

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#82

Post by Gareth321 »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #3
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'…

I didn't recommend an email host on purpose because that's not the point I was trying to make. I recommend iCloud since it's the cheapest paid email provider you can get if you have or had any Apple device. Fastmail is a close second.

I agree. iCloud isn’t great but it does the basics fine. It’s a big step down from Google but WELL worth the peace of mind. A few nice privacy features like Hide my Email and Privacy Relay (kind of like a VPN). Plus if you’re using Apple devices it integrates very nicely and makes full device backups quite seamless.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#83

Post by eloisius »

tamimio wrote: post #58
luguenth wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can always have your password in a password manager with emergency access, if you (not you god forbidden) die, someone close can access all these domains/emails.

The problem is that someone has to squat your domain for you for as long as want to prevent an adversary from registering your domain and intercepting any emails still being delivered to it.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#84

Post by jsmith99 »

I own .com and .com and I'm paying for Fastmail, but I hesitate to give these addresses out widely. I can see many benefits to domain email but I don't want people to think this is just a vanity address, especially as I don't work in IT or have a business or website. I'm an accountant (not public facing) and I think my @ actually looks more professional on my CV (although I wouldn't use it for actual work - I have my address at my employer for that).

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#85

Post by nurettin »

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'…

> If I die I don't care if someone else reads my mail, I'm dead.

Mom, why did grandfather let others take over his online bank account and send his inheritance money overseas?

He just didn't care, honey. He was a good man, but he simply did not care.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#86

Post by Jach »

Gmail recently decided to start flagging just about all of my @custom-domain emails that I have set to forward to it as spam. No amount of marking 'not spam' has made it stop. Fortunately, a filter to make sure they don't go to spam works. And almost all of the actual spam is to the raw gmail address, not the unique custom emails I give out when businesses or new website signups insist on one.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#87

Post by jacooper »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #3
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'…

I didn't recommend an email host on purpose because that's not the point I was trying to make. I recommend iCloud since it's the cheapest paid email provider you can get if you have or had any Apple device. Fastmail is a close second.

Skiff free tier includes custom domains

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#88

Post by bruce343434 »

nurettin wrote: post #85
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'…

> If I die I don't care if someone else reads my mail, I'm dead. Mom, why did grandfather let others take over his online bank account and send his inheritance money overseas? He just didn't care, honey. He was a good man, but he simply did not care.

I think that scenario requires someone registering the domain and hijacking the identity a few days after death? Quite unlikely it seems.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#89

Post by yosito »

jsmith99 wrote: post #84

I own .com and .com and I'm paying for Fastmail, but I hesitate to give these addresses out widely. I can see many benefits to domain email but I don't want people to think this is just a vanity address, especially as I don't work in IT or have a business or website. I'm an accountant (not public facing) and I think my @ actually looks more professional on my CV (although I wouldn't use it for actual work - I have my…

> I think my @ actually looks more professional on my CV

It doesn't. It looks amateurish and unofficial.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#90

Post by dale_glass »

theshrike79 wrote: post #62
dale_glass wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, GPG for email was mostly a mistake, because email can't be secured enough. GPG leaves all the headers exposed, and reveals who's talking to whom. That, right there, is a huge security problem. Turns out metadata is often plenty. And it can't even encrypt the subject, which is a footgun of enormous proportions. Picture a high stakes situation like say, a resistance member in the Russian occupied parts of Ukraine.…

Which communication methods leak no metadata? If two people are communicating, the message always needs to know where it's going and in most cases where it's coming from. Not encrypting the email subject is an implementation detail really.

> Which communication methods leak no metadata?

All leak something, but there are differences in what and how much.

> If two people are communicating, the message always needs to know where it's going and in most cases where it's coming from.

Yes, but in this case it'd be actually better to use something like Signal. You want something that's plausibly used often, is always encrypted, and is used for random chit-chat all the time, so that it's hard to tell if anything odd is going on from the outside.

GPG just screams "an important conversation is happening"

> Not encrypting the email subject is an implementation detail really.

And it's still unfixed, despite being a serious problem (it's easy to slip up and put something interesting in the subject).

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