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Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

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Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#61

Post by kumarvvr »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #55
somat wrote: post #25

It is a bit overkill, but the closest you can get to owning your online identity is to "own" your own domain. sarcastiquotes used because you don't really own a domain you only rent it. I run my own mail server because I am a sys-admin and running a mail-server is something I do for fun. but the amount of agency you gain once you have a domain is staggering. people without a domain are pretty much second class net ci…

this is not a good idea for multiple reasons. john@smith.stlouis.mo.us ? Who gets that first? arkhramud@maprikhoychich.stlouis.mo.us ? How hard is to trace a person from one location to another? To fix this email problem abandon the email as an account identifier. Use a 'username', or as I do a random set of characters and digits. There is no reason my account (login) has to be indexed as "john.smith@example.com". It…

For most services, the email address is also mandatory for verification, marketing materials and other stuff. So, from user experience point of view, it makes sense to use the email as the unique identifier for the account, as it avoids remembering another id for login.

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#62

Post by lisper »

imgabe wrote: post #42
tommica wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you move to another place?

It will be like phone numbers where your area code for the rest of your life is wherever you lived when you first got a phone.

You mean like it actually is today with mobile phones?

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#63

Post by jjav »

bongobingo1 wrote: post #38
gwnywg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run my own email server too, many will not because of fear of missconfiguring it- and in some respect they are correct, first thing I have done wrong 11-ish years ago was to make my server an open relay which was cought in 5 minutes from setting up and luckily I figured it out 5 minutes later. No big deal, I love postfix and dovecot :)

This is my fear. It's not really the running or configuring that scares me, it's the unceremonious bouncing/filtering at the other end. I have run some mailers (postfix) for some clients who didn't want to spring for a MAAS provider, I would to my knowledge, set up everything correctly with SPF, DMARC, DKIM, stuff would still land in the spam folder half the time. Maybe still my mistake, maybe over eager receivers, m…

There is also a half-way solution which is to run your own mail server for inbound traffic and use a mail delivery company to relay the outbound mail.

This gives you full control of receiving emails (for the online identity part) and gmail can't lock you out of your life with no recourse. But you don't need to deal with outbound email handling which is a bit more work.

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#64

Post by gitgud »

greazy wrote: post #53
somat wrote: post #25

It is a bit overkill, but the closest you can get to owning your online identity is to "own" your own domain. sarcastiquotes used because you don't really own a domain you only rent it. I run my own mail server because I am a sys-admin and running a mail-server is something I do for fun. but the amount of agency you gain once you have a domain is staggering. people without a domain are pretty much second class net ci…

> I wish municipality offered domains, for example: you move to St Louis you would get name.stlouis.mo.us this would give you the same agency online that a mail address gets you offline. Australia kinda does this with their `.id.au` second level domains for 'Individuals (by real name or common alias)' Not many folks use it or know about it.

> Australia kinda does this with their `.id.au`

Interesting, is there any links/documentation on this? Is it for every citizen or something?

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#65

Post by kumarvvr »

somat wrote: post #25

It is a bit overkill, but the closest you can get to owning your online identity is to "own" your own domain. sarcastiquotes used because you don't really own a domain you only rent it. I run my own mail server because I am a sys-admin and running a mail-server is something I do for fun. but the amount of agency you gain once you have a domain is staggering. people without a domain are pretty much second class net ci…

I am a developer but have limited knowledge about setting up my own email server.

Do you know of any resources that I can read to help me do it on my own?

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#66

Post by zuhsetaqi »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #55
somat wrote: post #25

It is a bit overkill, but the closest you can get to owning your online identity is to "own" your own domain. sarcastiquotes used because you don't really own a domain you only rent it. I run my own mail server because I am a sys-admin and running a mail-server is something I do for fun. but the amount of agency you gain once you have a domain is staggering. people without a domain are pretty much second class net ci…

this is not a good idea for multiple reasons. john@smith.stlouis.mo.us ? Who gets that first? arkhramud@maprikhoychich.stlouis.mo.us ? How hard is to trace a person from one location to another? To fix this email problem abandon the email as an account identifier. Use a 'username', or as I do a random set of characters and digits. There is no reason my account (login) has to be indexed as "john.smith@example.com". It…

> It can be "SDf23wfwef". And, at an other site, it can be "hdf3gf0s", and so on.

I just use the name of the service. So for example it would be github@example.com for my Github Account.

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#67

Post by kazinator »

bongobingo1 wrote: post #38
gwnywg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run my own email server too, many will not because of fear of missconfiguring it- and in some respect they are correct, first thing I have done wrong 11-ish years ago was to make my server an open relay which was cought in 5 minutes from setting up and luckily I figured it out 5 minutes later. No big deal, I love postfix and dovecot :)

This is my fear. It's not really the running or configuring that scares me, it's the unceremonious bouncing/filtering at the other end. I have run some mailers (postfix) for some clients who didn't want to spring for a MAAS provider, I would to my knowledge, set up everything correctly with SPF, DMARC, DKIM, stuff would still land in the spam folder half the time. Maybe still my mistake, maybe over eager receivers, m…

Bouncing on the other end has nothing to do with running your own mail domain. In e-mail, sending and receiving are decoupled. Some people use the same local mail server to do both: to relay outgoing mail and to receive. But these are independent functions, and you don't have to send mail through your server. You can configure your mail client(s) with the SMTP credentials from you mail provider (such as your ISP). That's used for sending. For receiving, you connect to your own server via IMAP4.

Basically your sending side (if you choose to) can be essentially unrelated to your self-hosted mail receiving infrastructure except in the small fact of using your sending identity in the From: headers of your e-mails: you@yourdomain.com.

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#68

Post by throwaway4good »

tjpnz wrote: post #10
irjustin wrote: post #4

This is largely true for myself as well. 1Password helps me and my family from going full in, but if I lost my gmail i would have a lot of problems. The recent discussion of CP flagging wreaking havoc[0] has caused us to start evaluating because we do have young children and we do take pictures for healthcare providers. Feels like a ticking time bomb for us. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-su…

The bastards even refused to restore access after the individuals involved were cleared by police. That part alone has made me start considering other options. No company should be allowed to wield that much power over a person.

I think they refused to right the case as there are many others and they don’t want to set the precedence of people getting anything out of challenging them.

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#69

Post by demopathos »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #57

> people should stop and think carefully when choosing the @example.com part of their email address. It’s a decision you’re probably set to live with for life Really? I’ve had dozens of email addresses over decades. I have a few favorites but even those have changed over time. I think your is hyperbole.

Then you fall outside the probably. The overwhelming majority of people have a single address their entire life

Re: Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)

#70

Post by satellite2 »

It's a technical board so everyone propose technical solutions. But I really hope that the solution will be a legal one. That the law will change to make it as hard to kick someone from an email service as to cut running water. And to forbid the companies to define anti litigation, private courts etc. in their TOS.
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