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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

#131

Post by jsjohnst »

bad_user wrote: post #51

Fastmail supports "masked email", a feature for generating random email addresses. This has 1Password integration and can be set-up on your own domain: https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/4406536368911-Ma... Even before this, Fastmail supported subdomain aliasing. Which you could have on any email host that has customizable forwarding. Including Google Suite (although with GS sending emails from such "aliases…

> Including Google Suite (although with GS sending emails from such "aliases" will fail DKIM, not ideal)

Not if you properly configure DKIM records for it… https://support.google.com/a/answer/177063

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#132

Post by mikro2nd »

dale_glass wrote: post #90
theshrike79 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> GPG just screams "an important conversation is happening"

is just another argument in favour of all email being encrypted.

And yes, there's side-channel/metadata still in the clear, and that's a problem, but still a smaller problem. The only crowd I know working on solutions to minimise/eliminate that problem is the Cwtch project (not product!)

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#133

Post by haneul »

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 tried to log into the “Ethereum” Minecraft account after many years of hiatus and discovered that I didn’t remember the password, and the associated gmail had somehow been deleted. I now use my own domain name for email.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#134

Post by utrack »

piaste wrote: post #126
bbor wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be open to the nationalization of email services? Curious if your very HN-friendly sentiment also implies agreement with this very HN-unfriendly extension.

There's little need to nationalize, since emails don't have a last-mile or natural monopoly issue. I think, however, that modern countries should provide all citizens with an official, public, mail address. Restrict them to only send/receive emails to/from a whitelist of publicly registered service providers with very strict personal data governance requirements (government, banks, utilities, medical services, higher…

Good idea which will work for most people, however it'll be an issue for dissidents or people moving countries. Those can use some other provider, while everyone else (99%?) can be covered by this solution.

I guess there should be a provision against gov services making it mandatory for people to use the gov provided email.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#135

Post by akho »

Yizahi wrote: post #106
akho wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you spam. That's why they're called "spam blacklists". You can spam inadvertently, of course, e. g. if you (or someone else you gave an email on your domain) get pwned. That's problematic. The issue is still overblown.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I've read that some blacklists operate on the guilty until proven innocent basis and owner needs to prove that he is legit first, to each blocklist separately. Is it true? I also regularly see comments like "just configure DMARK, and BLA and BLABLA and another ten items, and maintain them up to date forever, and you will be fine". Would I need to learn and do all this if want to use custom dom…

> Maybe I'm mistaken, but I've read that some blacklists operate on the guilty until proven innocent basis and owner needs to prove that he is legit first, to each blocklist separately.

No, I don't know of any public blocklists that operate that way.

The big providers (msft & goog) have reputation mechanisms though, which can be volatile for a new domain. Getting that reputation to a hard blacklist requires that you genuinely spam, but some early mails may end up in junk folders anyway.

> Would I need to learn and do all this if want to use custom domain with some provider like Protonmail or Fastmail?

No. Your provider will give you instructions on how to set up your DNS records. The last relevant standard is from 2015, it's somewhat unlikely that you'll have to update these things often. Your provider should tell you if anything needs updating.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#136

Post by oliwarner »

> One of my concerns is that, if I were unable to renew my domain … someone else could register it and start receiving my emails

And what happens if your email provider does the same? What happens if they close your account because you were unable to login and they give your handle to somebody else? What happens when they suspend your account because you logged into something they don't approve of?

TFA is a weak, self-defeating argument against best practice. Own your domain, register it for a long time.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#137

Post by jsjohnst »

tamimio wrote: post #57

> if I were unable to renew my domain (e.g., in case of death), While I agree about the “losing control” issue, however, when you own a domain you actually own it, not renting it, not lease it, It is yours, and unless you do something clearly illegal no one can just take it, an email in another provider however, they can delete your email with all its content anytime, and most of the times you can’t do anything about…

> when you own a domain you actually own it, not renting it, not lease it, It is yours, and unless you do something clearly illegal no one can just take it

Since when did something you “own” require recurring renewal fees or else it’s repossessed by the place you got it from. That is essentially the very foundational difference between a lease/rent and “own”. Further, “no one can just take it” is so clearly misguided and factually wrong which even a basic google search can uncover countless examples of it happening.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#139

Post by layer8 »

Yizahi wrote: post #96
traceroute66 wrote: post #39

> Reasons to not use your own domain for email Aside from the fact that the author of the blog doesn't really provide any "reasons" in their blog ... There are ZERO reasons not to use your own domain name for email. The biggest reason TO use your own domain name is that you are not subject to the corporate whims of your ISP, cloud-email provider or whatever. You get to choose, and you get to choose when to switch. Th…

What about blacklists? I read that it is a huge problem with custom domains.

It’s typically not domain names that are black listed, but IP addresses of the hosts that are sending the emails. Those are independent.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#140

Post by Groxx »

Yizahi wrote: post #106
akho wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you spam. That's why they're called "spam blacklists". You can spam inadvertently, of course, e. g. if you (or someone else you gave an email on your domain) get pwned. That's problematic. The issue is still overblown.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I've read that some blacklists operate on the guilty until proven innocent basis and owner needs to prove that he is legit first, to each blocklist separately. Is it true? I also regularly see comments like "just configure DMARK, and BLA and BLABLA and another ten items, and maintain them up to date forever, and you will be fine". Would I need to learn and do all this if want to use custom dom…

Hosting your own email system in its entirety out of your domain, i.e. becoming a mail host, does run into this, yes. Primarily around sending issues to other major hosts - you can do it and email yourself / within your domain just fine, but Gmail will probably block your messages.

Using your domain with an established provider has absolutely zero of those issues. That's super simple and works everywhere immediately.

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