Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Leave Gmail in 10 steps

blog.dipasquale.fr

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 151 posts

Re: Leave Gmail in 10 steps

#51

Post by rckclmbr »

jackewiehose wrote: post #45

> First, I strongly suggest you buy a domain name, so that you really own your mail address Any opinions on that? I did so years ago (mostly for the reason of being independent of a mail provider) but meanwhile I realized you never "own" a domain. It's always just rented. It would be bad if someone gets in control of my domain so I just hope this won't happen before I'm dead... And even then it could be bad if it hap…

At $10/year it would cost $800 for your lifetime. Not too shabby to put control in your hands

Re: Leave Gmail in 10 steps

#52

Post by freedomben »

craftyguy wrote: post #30
coldnose wrote: post #25

If anyone's gone through this trouble already, care to explain how you did it? I've been thinking about rolling a VPS with postfix/dovecot, but it seems like such a hassle to maintain, and I'm not super confident in my ability to secure it.

Find an email provider, sign up/pay for service, and use it. I recommend buying a domain, so you can have a fairly static email address even if you end up changing providers later on. Rolling your own email service never seemed worth it to me. You'll have to deal with backups/recovery, maintenance, and any quirks associated with the big mail places rejecting mails from your service. I'm almost certain someone will ch…

But it's not bad! Jk, I'm a devops guy so I set up servers and infrastructures for a living, and I still think it's a pain in the ass. Mostly getting TLS working is the hard part. If you don't get it right, your emails will all go to the spam folder of the recipient, or just not deliver at all. Hell even if you get it right, that still might happen.

Re: Leave Gmail in 10 steps

#53

Post by nightski »

jmole wrote: post #18

Why doesn't anyone every mention actually paying google and using GSuite, instead of using their free service?

That might remove ads but it does little to assure someone regarding the privacy concerns. Google likely still stores a metric ton of data on you.

Re: Leave Gmail in 10 steps

#55

Post by ricccardo »

> In exchange for free mails, would you let your postman open your letters, read them, and insert ads related to their contents?

Note that this is not the case anymore: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html

We never did that for G Suite, but with this announcement we also stopped doing it for consumer.

Disclaimer: Googler working on Gmail. Please stay :-)

Re: Leave Gmail in 10 steps

#57

Post by petilon »

freedomben wrote: post #49
petilon wrote: post #44

If you have Gmail click this link, it is an eye opener: https://myaccount.google.com/purchases Google knows every online purchase you ever made, every line item, the price you paid, the address it was delivered to, and so on. Keep in mind that Facebook and Google also combine this data with offline data about you purchased from other companies, to complete the picture. UPDATE: Here's an example of Google purchasing d…

This just looks like a list compiled from invoices/receipts that were sent to my gmail from various vendors that has been parsed. Actually there's a lot of stuff that is missing. Seems pretty tame actually, but I also don't use gmail for my whole life. I'm a big advocate of privacy, but I think Google is pretty open about what they do. If you don't want this, there are usually ways to opt out and still use the servic…

>> Google is pretty open about what they do

Where have they disclosed their deal with MasterCard?

>> there are usually ways to opt out and still use the service

Often the opt outs don't work, and these appear to be "intentional bugs": wifi privacy intentional bug https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/ google home bug https://bgr.com/2017/10/11/google-home-mini-spying-on-user-f...

And the latest "bug": In Chrome if you turn off "Allow Chrome sign-in", Chrome signs you into the browser anyway, when you sign into Gmail.

Google's "don't be evil" days are a distant memory now.

Re: Leave Gmail in 10 steps

#58

Post by esalman »

nooorofe wrote: post #47
petilon wrote: post #44

If you have Gmail click this link, it is an eye opener: https://myaccount.google.com/purchases Google knows every online purchase you ever made, every line item, the price you paid, the address it was delivered to, and so on. Keep in mind that Facebook and Google also combine this data with offline data about you purchased from other companies, to complete the picture. UPDATE: Here's an example of Google purchasing d…

I've checked https://myaccount.google.com/purchases "You don't have any purchases"

Got that from my work Google apps account. But got results from my personal Gmail. It indeed looks like a list compiled from my email invoices. I don't remember asking Google to keep track of it though.

Re: Leave Gmail in 10 steps

#59

Post by ian0 »

petilon wrote: post #44

If you have Gmail click this link, it is an eye opener: https://myaccount.google.com/purchases Google knows every online purchase you ever made, every line item, the price you paid, the address it was delivered to, and so on. Keep in mind that Facebook and Google also combine this data with offline data about you purchased from other companies, to complete the picture. UPDATE: Here's an example of Google purchasing d…

> Your purchases and reservations are brought together from across your Google Account, from sources including: Orders placed using Google services, like Google Play Store, Google Express, or through the Google Assistant. Order receipts or confirmations received in Gmail.[1]

Wow I have a bunch gained from scraping my emails (there is an info icon that tells you the source). Mostly larger multinational merchants (Amazon/PSN), obviously the scraping isn't very advanced. Only covers a tiny fraction of my online purchases with receipts in gmail.

I also see a bunch of purchases made by a guy with the same name but on a different continent who frequently gives out the wrong gmail address (I get random mails from their friends from time to time). Thankfully they aren't buying uranium :P

Once again with google data collection I cant help but get the feeling that this is something that wasn't specifically designed for advertising. Why would they provide that link in the first place and draw attention to it when they could just do it behind the scenes (as Im sure the rest are)?

[1] https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7673989?p=orders&...

Re: Leave Gmail in 10 steps

#60

Post by freedomben »

petilon wrote: post #57
freedomben wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just looks like a list compiled from invoices/receipts that were sent to my gmail from various vendors that has been parsed. Actually there's a lot of stuff that is missing. Seems pretty tame actually, but I also don't use gmail for my whole life. I'm a big advocate of privacy, but I think Google is pretty open about what they do. If you don't want this, there are usually ways to opt out and still use the servic…

>> Google is pretty open about what they do Where have they disclosed their deal with MasterCard? >> there are usually ways to opt out and still use the service Often the opt outs don't work, and these appear to be "intentional bugs": wifi privacy intentional bug https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/ google home bug https://bgr.com/2017/10/11/google-home-mini-spying-on-user-f... And the latest…

Fair points, tho I do think I apply Hanlon's Razor a little more liberally there than you do.
Post reply on HN