141–150 of 406 posts
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I've taken steps to degoogle too, but like you I've rather stuck on Android because over the years I've ossified a set of tools I like (KeepassDX and Syncthing are really important, and Firefox on Android is actually damn good).
GrapheneOS lets you use Play Store apps
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You kinda get that with your own domain. I think that's the best you are going to get
Isn't losing your domain a huge risk for any common user?
With a custom domain, you can find a registrar where there are actual humans on the other side.
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…
I am very interested in moving my photos and data to a self-hosted solution but am a little anxious about backups. Do you simply trust hetzner to not lose the data on your 1TB storage box? (I am aware that I am currently trusting google and dropbox to do just that.)
Anyone considering a move should also look at NameCrane/CraneMail by the crew behind BuyVM. Solid service, incredibly reasonable prices, great community/discord. They are always looking to improve, extremely proactive and reactive to customer feedback and issues. No builtin PGP, but I believe that is out of their control as they use SmarterMail on the backend.
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.
Fastmail is kind of a weird service. If you stop paying they release your email for someone else to take over. Pretty unacceptable this day and age.
how is this different from using PGP with Gmail?
As far as I know, Gmail doesn’t allow saving PGP keys or using them to write new emails, whereas mailbox.org integrates the entire PGP service and to send an email, even from iOS where PGP apps are "ugly," you just need to do it from the web interface. Anyway I wrote the details in the post. Edit: I have to mention that I generated my PGP keys locally and then imported to Mailbox.Org
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Which is why you should buy your own domain so you can easily move to another provider. And backup your emails of course.
I own a domain that I use as my primary email address, but it's a "premium" domain that costs quite a bit to lease every year. To me the main concern here is that my payment fails, I don't notice, the domain goes up for sale and somebody grabs it. Then they have access to everything. So, I use my personal domain for all mail except anything that's "vital" like government websites, banking, paying rent, etc. for which…
Another recommendation you should consider is to find a domain that ends in one of the common top-level domains - like .COM, .NET, or .ORG - because for using with *vital government services* you would not believe how many good natured civil servants (or for that manner even customer service folks in private/commercial companies too!) have no idea that email addresses can end in something other than .com, .net, or .org...and if you try to give them an address that, say, ends in like .FR, or .CC, or .ME, etc...They will try to place a ".com" at the end of it! My experience shows that folks in the U.S. know far less about other TLDs...and are more likely to commit this error, but folks outside of U.S. are perfectly cool with all manner of different TLS. I have had a somesurname.CC domain name as the mailbox for all my family members for more than a decade...and they are all trained to be LOUD and explicit when they communicate to government workers and customer service folks. So, i should have just gotten an easier TLD, but ah well. Live and learn! :-)
EDIT: Forgot to add that choossing the more common .COM, .NET, or .ORG TLDs for a domain name *tends* to be cheaper than many premium domains names. Each registrar wil of course vary, but mostly these tend to be reasonably priced.
> The problem with email is that everything is transmitted in plain text. That's not a Gmail problem, and no reason to migrate. Some use cases just don't fit email, and for those, we have other, more fitting platforms. > So, I went with mailbox.org that still offers integrated PGP encryption, and if you want, you can always use external PGP too (which I was already doing with Gmail). Ok, so now you have two problems.
> That's not a Gmail problem, and no reason to migrate. It is a problem with Gmail , because they're helping themselves into your email, as was explained by the author in the sentence immediately after the one you quoted: > Technically, Google can store every message you receive and know everything, and U.S. agencies can request access to that data
How do I get my family to move off of Gmail? I keep telling them that Google spies on you, but they don’t care because it is free and it works. How reliable are these providers and what are the chances these providers emails would bounce or go to spam when sending an email?
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.
Fastmail is kind of a weird service. If you stop paying they release your email for someone else to take over. Pretty unacceptable this day and age.