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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

#151

Post by argulane »

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…

Estonia tried this with national first.last@eesti.ee email for everyone. Turns out nobody cared and they will shut it down on 1. November.

https://news.err.ee/1608966110/ria-ends-support-for-eesti-ee...

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#152

Post by newscracker »

enasterosophes wrote: post #19

I use posteo, which satisfies the suggested requirements of being relatively cheap and the domain does not belong to me. However, doesn't this allow a sibling to the described threat model? If posteo go bust, their domain could be claimed by someone else. Then, even if I change email providers, senders who haven't updated their address books will keep sending email to my old posteo address. I think the points in the…

Keep in mind that Posteo recycles email addresses after a few months or so once the account is unpaid and/or deleted. This means, unless you have a difficult to guess or uncommon email address on Posteo, the chances that someone else might intentionally or inadvertently get your old email address is higher.

But I like the fact that Posteo allows prepaid credit balance in the account (but it allows only a maximum balance of EUR 60). That could help in keeping one’s address alive for longer.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#153

Post by tehlike »

mrweasel wrote: post #49
alias_neo wrote: post #9

One of my mail domain's can only be registered for a year at a time, which really bothers me, I feel like it leaves the risk of losing it higher than others which I can register for longer. I don't know if there's a way around it, but for the record, it's a .es domain, and I am not Spanish, nor do I live in Spain.

The Danish .dk domains have a nice feature, if you don't pay then they aren't freed right away, they are "quarantined" for a few months. In this period you're the only one who can renew it.

Unrelated, but couldn't find a better way:

Is there a way I can reach you for a comment you made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34593834

Thanks.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#154

Post by flagged24 »

Aardwolf wrote: post #127
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'…

With an email service, your account can be terminated there. With a registrar, your account or domain could be terminated as well. So both have similar risk, so best strategy is to spread the risk and have multiple accounts of different types.

The thing is, my domain registrar can be contacted by phone. They have a support desk. Google will give you the cold shoulder when you are flagged by their AI system unless you can create an outcry on social media.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#155

Post by tupolef »

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…

I've read that advice, about not hosting your own email server, every week for a few years now, but at least for anyone with a few years of self-hosting experience I would disagree. There is just a little more checkpoints than 15 years ago. Before, you needed to check your reputation on spamfilters, be careful of viruses and sending rates and dome basic DNS entries.

Nowadays, check that your IPs are clean, subscribe to some monitoring for ip/domain reputation, host your own dns server and correctly use IPv6, DNSSec, Rspamd, Dkim, Dmarc, Spf, autoconfig/autodiscover. But when it's in place there is nothing special to update or debug.

I would suggest to check ISPconfig as a semi-DIY solution.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#156

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

vidarh wrote: post #75
dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #16

The main reasons for me that I stopped using my own domain: - some sites will just silently refuse to accept addresses on unknown domains and signing up becomes impossible - worse, some sites accept it for sign up, but later on refuse to send a password reset - every time you have you write down or say out our your email address to a non-technical person, you are then obligated to host a mini Q&A on domain names and…

I co-founded a vanity e-mail provider around 2000, and we 1) registered about 60,000 domains that we provided e-mail for, and we never had problems like that despite tens of thousands of those domains being with then-obscure ccTLDs, 2) a bit later launched the .name top-level domain, and for that we had some very limited initial teething problems because people back then still stupidly used regexes that assumed tld's…

> With respect to saying it out loud, I occasionally have to repeat my e-mail address once, but that's usually all it takes; we must be dealing with very different people.

It's not so much having to repeat myself - it's just me@myname.com - but people who apparently have never encountered an address that isn't @gmail.com etc before, who then want to have a 10 minute Q&A/tutorial session where I explain to them how domain names work, how anyone - yes, even you - can buy a domain, how email works, etc. Some people have just never looked behind the curtain, and I understand their curiosity. It's just sometimes quite annoying when I just need to get on with something.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#157

Post by executesorder66 »

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.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#158

Post by 8fingerlouie »

tupolef wrote: post #155
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…

I've read that advice, about not hosting your own email server, every week for a few years now, but at least for anyone with a few years of self-hosting experience I would disagree. There is just a little more checkpoints than 15 years ago. Before, you needed to check your reputation on spamfilters, be careful of viruses and sending rates and dome basic DNS entries. Nowadays, check that your IPs are clean, subscribe…

I'm not saying it's hard if you know what you're doing, but "correctly use IPv6, DNSSec, Rspamd, Dkim, Dmarc, Spf, autoconfig/autodiscover" is a lot of technology for simply sending and receiving email.

Considering that emails are insecure by design, and any email will have at least 2 participants, and you have no control over where the remote participant sends/receives emails, self hosting for privacy concerns is also pretty much pointless, except of course if you encrypt emails, but then the server doesn't matter anymore, and you might as well just use a public provider.

My argument is that by using a custom domain with a public provider, you will get almost all the benefits of self hosting emails, but none of the disadvantages. You're still in control of your domain, and even if your provider shuts down, you're just a couple of MX records away from your new provider.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#159

Post by alias_neo »

lolc wrote: post #150
alias_neo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the UK, and that's where I tend to see it most, on trade-person vans. If they've gone through the effort to get some nice logo design vinyl on their van, why not get a matching email domain for their "company"? For me, seeing a Gmail etc on the side of an otherwise nicely decorated van shows a lack of attention to detail, and that's not what I want in a trade-person, who typically I only hire for the tasks bey…

I get the feeling, but unless their business is something web-related, their attention to detail is better spent elsewhere.

I think you might be right, and maybe I should change my perspective.

Nobody really wants to deal with that, I do it, and I don't _want_ to.

Re: Reasons to not use your own domain for email

#160

Post by soraminazuki »

tjpnz wrote: post #110
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'…

As evidenced here the impact of account terminations can have a profound impact on a persons life. Email providers like Google should be treated as utilities and regulated as such, they should be legally obligated to communicate with their users, ideally working towards a resolution. Until then you really should be treating said accounts in the same way you would a hotel rental phone.

Not to mention that account termination is only one way email providers can screw you over. They can bait and switch, take your emails hostage, and start charging premium. They can put ads that look like legitimate emails. They can cut costs, and open your emails up to hackers. They can peek, censor, or tamper with your private emails. They can even impersonate you.

Some people might laugh that away as ridiculous. But who can predict what'll happen in the next few decades? I find it highly unlikely that any single email provider will continue to keep the current level of service for the rest of my lifetime. Enshittification is real.

Your email address is inextricably tied to your online identity. If you don't own your email address, you're handing over control of your digital life to the whims of a company. Because what can you do when your email provider goes rogue? Shed your entire digital identity?

Sure, using your own domain can open you up to mistakes. But at least, you're the one in charge. By borrowing an email address from a company, you lose control. And for what exactly? It's not going to protect you against the loss of access to your emails, contrary to what the article implies. Worse yet, there are no preventative measures you can take unlike with domain expiration.

With all due respect, the article gives the worst advice ever. There's nothing worse than irrevocably handing over the keys to your digital life to an advertising company, whose business model is fundamentally at odds with your best interests.

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