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Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

giuliomagnifico.blog

121–130 of 406 posts

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#121

I spent the past month "de-Googling" my life after I saw a notice in my Gmail inbox that it was 20 years old. I took a step back and realized just how invested into the Google ecosystem I was. Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Drive, Maps, Keep, Photos, YouTube, FitBit, Android. Basically my entire digital life. My goal was more diversifying than security/privacy, but security/privacy is a really nice bonus. I ended up going wi…

What’s the point though? So you don’t come across as a Google shill?

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#122
I’ve been a Fastmail user for years, having left Gmail. It works great and have nothing be but praise for them. I use my own domain with them so if I decide to leave it’s not an issue worrying about updating people with my new email.

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#123
> The last two providers offered true end-to-end encryption

This is not quite right. The only offer e2ee if you send an email to someone on the same provider (e.g. ProtonMail to ProtonMail). If you write to someone using Gmail, it's not e2ee.

IMHO this kind of e2ee is interesting for companies (because every employee is on the same provider, and it's better to have the internal communications on ProtonMail than shared with Google on Gmail), but for a personal email it doesn't matter so much.

What's really important is to have a custom domain so that you are not stuck with one provider.

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#124

I’ve been a Fastmail user for years, having left Gmail. It works great and have nothing be but praise for them. I use my own domain with them so if I decide to leave it’s not an issue worrying about updating people with my new email.

I was really happy with Fastmail as well. Before that I used ProtonMail, which was annoying because it forced me to install their bridge and use their encryption stuff.

After Fastmail I went to Migadu, and it's absolutely great. I have never seen support requests getting answers that quickly :-).

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#125
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, most big mail providers won’t accept email from your self-hosted mail server, even with DKIM, SPF, etc. So, diversifying is as good as it gets.

Has this been tested recently? I had no problem sending mail to my own Gmail account from my own server. Even without SPF (then I got a bunch of spam spoof bounces and realized I forgot SPF)

I've been self-hosting E-mail for a long time (which itself probably helps with reputation), and I very rarely have deliverability problems.

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#126

I spent the past month "de-Googling" my life after I saw a notice in my Gmail inbox that it was 20 years old. I took a step back and realized just how invested into the Google ecosystem I was. Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Drive, Maps, Keep, Photos, YouTube, FitBit, Android. Basically my entire digital life. My goal was more diversifying than security/privacy, but security/privacy is a really nice bonus. I ended up going wi…

What’s the point though? So you don’t come across as a Google shill?

Not the author, but it's nice to support alternatives.

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#127
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean e2e? on-disk encryption (ie. "encryption at rest") is basically used by everyone, including gmail and outlook.

You can tell how well I've researched this ;) but yes.

Indeed. The HTTPS connection is enecrypted, and they TRY to use TLS first when delivering mail, but it will fall back to cleartext easily if the other end doesn't support TLS.

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#128

I’ve been a Fastmail user for years, having left Gmail. It works great and have nothing be but praise for them. I use my own domain with them so if I decide to leave it’s not an issue worrying about updating people with my new email.

Like you, I am a happy long-term user of Fastmail. In addition to the excellent mail and calendar service, their tech support is top-notch: fast and generally providing the correct answer in their first communication.

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#129
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why you should buy your own domain so you can easily move to another provider. And backup your emails of course.

I wonder how many more people have lost access to their DNS than to their email account. When you lease a domain (you can't buy domains), you have to periodically renew your lease - this is much more likely to be a problem than typical mail accounts. And if you lose your domain, and someone buys it, they now get all of your email - a much worse situation than Google locking out of your account. And there is no chance…

I have zero data to justify my assumption...but i assume less people lose their domain vs folks who lose access to their email. That being said, fully agreed that managing one's domain name - especially the one tied to your mail email address - is so critically important to protect. Big brand domain name leasers, er, um, i mean registrars (BTW, agreed with you on only being able to *lease* domains) tend to offer extra account protection like multi-factor authentication, which should be the bare minimum that is used. At some point, if someone is managing LOTS of domain names, i get that it can be a burden...but for low number of domains (or even just 1 or 2 domains for a family), i think focusing on good security and keeping on payment aspects is not so tough...and helps immensely from getting negatively impacted.

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#130
post #7

I started the get itchy about so much of my life sitting on Google about 5 years ago, so I decided to take the leap to Fastmail and haven’t looked back. Didn’t need to do anything special for the migration. The in house importer they offer pulled over 80GB in a day and I was set from there. Fastmail isn’t going to give you end to end encryption - but - I think just shedding a major Google service is a massive win pri…

This solves the "dependence on Gmail" problem (which is definitely a worthy problem to solve) but not the general "dependence on a particular mail provider" problem. The next step in this walk-down-the-risk-chain is self-hosting on a VPS, where you're now just dependent on your VPS provider, and the next step could be self-hosting on your own metal, where you're now just dependent on your ISP. Happy trails!

Self-hosting seems a bit extreme. The first step is actually to have your own custom domain, so that you can change provider easily. Granted you still depend on a provider, but you are not locked in.
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