Reasons to not use your own domain for email • Hacker News Board

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#201

Post by danillonunes » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 3:40 PM UTC

mingus88 wrote: post #99

bruce343434 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My mother in law’s bank account was drained within a week of her passing. Evidently someone at the hospital had to have been involved, although we never learned the vector. It’s really not a stretch to imagine a sophisticated attacker who specializes in identity theft paying off hospital staff for access to dead patient’s info, even phones. It’s the last thing on the families minds. We already know that insiders at c…

That's a very specific and small target to aim. Your victim not only has to use an email with their own domain, but they also need to have their domain expire at about the same time as they die. Wait too long and the family already had access to the bank through traditional means.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#202

Post by daft_pink » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 3:48 PM UTC

danwee wrote: post #42

daft_pink wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, but it's better to be locked to paying a domain that you can migrate between providers for competition, than apple who's devices you may not use in the future or can change their pricing however they like.

It's better to own and not to rent in my opinion. Although, I appreciate the privacy arguments either way. Maybe use icloud hide my email for the things you want to keep the most private?

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#203

Post by JamesLeonis » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 4:15 PM UTC

The author points out real risks when running your own domain. When you host your own domain, you must treat that and its registrar as a risk vector like your inbox, including 2FA, locking domain transfer, auto-renew, backup email accounts, and update payment details. Like the author I too run my own email out of my domain, and I love the flexibility, but it requires vigilance.

One serious issue is how much email became the de-facto identity of the Internet. This is the ultimate reason why all the above is necessary.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#204

Post by sebazzz » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 4:40 PM UTC

8fingerlouie wrote: post #91

DO use a your own domain. Advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. Instead of being at the mercy of whatever email provider you choose, you're free to move your domain where ever you want, without updating "a million" senders. DO NOT host your own email server though. A couple of decades ago it made perfect sense to do so, but these days it's simply not worth the trouble. Instead use Google/Outlook/Apple/Whatever t…

> use /Outlook/ to host your custom domain and use their offerings with your custom domain

Well, unless you’re willing to pay for a business Office 365 license, it won’t happen on Outlook anymore. Outlook only supported Godaddy, of all registrars, anyway, but now next in November they will remove custom domain support altogether.

I’ve now migrated to iCloud, which supports any registrar (certainly not what I expected from Apple), and supports some registrars like Cloudflare automatically.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#205

Post by BiteCode_dev » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 5:12 PM UTC

Gigachad wrote: post #167

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #107

The best reason against it is the fact many website, because of stupid policies or incompetent engineers, will reject the address as invalid. Happens to me regularly and makes my life difficult. I still like better than the alternative though. I got locked out of google accounts twice in my life and had one other email provider close entirely.

I’ve had a .me tld for 5 years and am yet to come across a single site that rejects it.

It's really dependant on the tld. I have contact@bitecode.dev for the https://bitecode.dev blog that never has any issue.

But my firstnamelastname.email regularly is rejected.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#206

Post by BiteCode_dev » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 5:13 PM UTC

executesorder66 wrote: post #157

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #107

The best reason against it is the fact many website, because of stupid policies or incompetent engineers, will reject the address as invalid. Happens to me regularly and makes my life difficult. I still like better than the alternative though. I got locked out of google accounts twice in my life and had one other email provider close entirely.

Agreed, but it depends which TLD you use. I used to have a .name domain which gave me trouble with less than 1% of every service I've ever used it with over 15 years. I switched to a .net domain for my email last year, and I would be very surprised if I ever had any trouble with it.

.net domains are as good as .com ones when it comes to recognition because they are very old.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#207

Post by BiteCode_dev » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 5:21 PM UTC

anon373839 wrote: post #146

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #107

The best reason against it is the fact many website, because of stupid policies or incompetent engineers, will reject the address as invalid. Happens to me regularly and makes my life difficult. I still like better than the alternative though. I got locked out of google accounts twice in my life and had one other email provider close entirely.

Really? There are millions of @companyname.com and @randomschool.edu domains. They can’t all have been whitelisted. Where are you running into this issue?

It's very tld dependant. .com and .edu have been there forever, so there are no problems.

But .xyz are usually spammy domains, so they are rejected by default.

My personnal .email address is also often rejected because the tld is quite recent.

The sites I have the most problems with are:

- small shops

- state own ones

- public utilities

Some bugs are not even pure rejection. E.G: my electricity provider, for the longest time, accepted my email when subscribing or using "forget password", but not when login.

On site once tried to autocorrect my email (!), to "fix" the tld.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#208

Post by 93po » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 5:55 PM UTC

I had to stop using my own domain and fastmail because I lost not one, but two very important job offers due to my emails not getting received. Not spammed, just outright not received. I also frequently (30% of the time) don't get "verify your email address" emails from websites these days when using my own domain+fastmail.

I'm back to gmail and resent having to do so. But it's the only option to not constantly be worried about important emails not making it.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#209

Post by piaste » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 6:31 PM UTC

danaris wrote: post #175

piaste wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

...Why default to restricting to a whitelist? If the government is giving you an email address, you should be able to use that as your only email address, that you use for talking with friends and family, etc. If someone's abusing the privilege, then there can be restrictions added.

Inbox restrictions: because otherwise every single service ever will start accepting only official government emails to sign up, killing anonymity on the internet (and clogging your official mailbox with not-quite-spam).

Outbox restrictions: because otherwise every citizen who gets a bit of malware on one of their devices will start sending spam and get (temporarily) restricted, and the whole point is to have a reliable address that you know the citizen cannot lose access to. Also because it would be real weird if you could send messages to addresses that cannot reply to you because of the inbox whitelist.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#210

Post by AnonC » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 7:16 PM UTC

_xivi wrote: post #52

> most websites using it as a way to reset your password > Privacy... I am starting to use iCloud's Hide My Email to change my email address on accounts I have created > domain name can be the weakest link to accessing your online accounts Much of your stress points seem actually about using email for user accounts. I think the problem is more that we've abused emails, using them as a form of identification, partly t…

But it’s at least easier to get a new email address or have several (or an infinite number of them) compared to having accounts tied to a phone number. I’d actually prefer a system that uses email addresses as opposed to phone numbers.