Gmail is bad, actually
Things that are wrong with gmail
1. Google shows you adverts.
2. Google reads your email to decide what adverts to show you.
3. Any misspelling of your address is also a gmail address, so if somebody is trying and failing to reach you, they will not get a bounce message.
4. Your personal private messages are mined for advertising purposes.
5. A lot of messages not meant for you will land in your inbox.
6. Google reads your most personal messages to decide what products to show you.
(1/N)
Things that are wrong with gmail
7. Every misspelling of your email address goes to people who receive a lot of messages not for them. If somebody is trying and failing to reach you, they will not get a reply.
8. Google reads your love letters and sends information about them to other companies.
9. People using "free" services have no contract with google and no right to access any kind of support at all, which means google can suddenly lock you out of your account and you have no recourse…
(2/N)
Things that are wrong with gmail
9 (continued) If you are suddenly locked out, you will not be offered an opportunity to back up your data. You will not be able to set up a forward or an autoreply. You would just, without warning, lose access to every single google service you rely on.
10. Google reads correspondences with your lawyer, with your love, with your mother to construct an intimate profile of your wants, needs, interests and identity and then sells that to strangers.
Fin
Quitting gmail
You can just ghost gmail without closing your account.
1. You'll need a new email address. Maybe your ISP provides one? A friend with a domain name? Proton mail?
2. Set google to forward everything to your new address.
3. Set an autoreply saying what your new address is.
4. As it becomes relevant, unsubscribe from email lists and then resubscribe with your new address.
5. Move your accounts to also use your new address. Go at whatever pace works for you.
Recommend your favourite email service / provider/ etc with a link and a brief blurb of why you like it, and I'll share your reply.
Quitting gmail
@celesteh I work for Tutanota and even I still have an old gmail address that I'm ghosting.
I just want to say that slowly moving new stuff to new address is totally an option
Quitting gmail
I don't want to miss anything from an old friend, so I keep it going. But also, there are mailing lists I don't want to leave but will never bother to move.
Quitting gmail
@celesteh and that's fine! I think mainly Google shouldn't see your important info otherwise... eh?
Quitting gmail
I mean, when I feel pessimistic, quitting gmail is a form of liberalism. They still have tentacles everywhere and handle so many emails that virtually anything I send is still being intercepted. The only way to fix this is to break them up, make it illegal and some kind of very liberal communism that has strong defences of individual liberty and privacy.
Fortunately, this is also the way to solve many problems, so that's good.
Quitting gmail
@celesteh the powers of capitalism seem inescapable huh?
There's a *huge* wave of awareness on the rise and people are moving, we see that. It won't take one day but I think gmail won't have the same hegemony it enjoyed before.
Quitting gmail
Well, the forces of capitalist are inescapable /in capitalism/. But it's very cheering to hear of any anti-google movement.
Quitting gmail
@celesteh I just wanted to offer an analogy. Giants have a lot of money to throw at everything but they are also bureaucratic, mismanaged and don't work for their users
Quitting gmail
@bradysflungtablet @celesteh I think we are doing a good job but there are still things we are catching up with
https://tutanota.com/
@celesteh Posteo (https://posteo.de/en). i've been using it for four years, so i guess it's my favourite though i haven't used any other modern service for comparison.
They do one thing and they do it well. Okay, two things: there's also a calendar. They have no intentions to be a market leader, just to do their own part well.
I'll gladly keep paying my monthly 1€ for their service (20€ at a time, not every month).
@Stoori @celesteh basically the same reason I switched to https://mailbox.org/en/ Just to have a simple mail provider. Preferably European.
They even have an option for some disk space, but for now I’m keeping that separated in a Nextcloud instance.
@celesteh https://tutanota.com
- open source
- privacy
- germany (might be a con to some. i feel positively toward german software overall idk)
- smartphone apps
- (also has calendar)
@celesteh Mailfence! https://mailfence.com/
Hosted in BE, tracker-free, secure at-rest, and as protected as an EU data farm can be. Browser-based PGP if you want it.
(okay it took me three tries to type the link correctly, I'm tired)
@celesteh i run my own mailserver on an VPS. it was not trivial to setup, but for now it works quite well. I also have mailing addresses at tutanota and proton but they are non-essential. but they work well. they are both somewhat closed because using smtp+imap makes their missions moot.
i think to run your own mailserver it's possible to do it with https://mailinabox.email/ with less hassle.
@celesteh Another vote for posteo here.
@celesteh I should also note that I mostly use my own domains plus an email client (in my case, thunderbird - I have been using that for, I guess, over 15 years and never looked back).
@luka @draco @celesteh
Posteo, for all the good it is, will not let you use a custom domain.
They have a good reason though.
They go well out of their way to disconnect the person paying for the account from the account itself, as domains have to be registered, it re-connects the person to the account. They've just flat out said that they don't want that, and won't offer it.
I've been using panix (www.panix.com) for, hmm, not quite thirty years now - because sometimes what I want is shell access. But panix will do pop, imap, webmail, and a host (heh;-) of other things. I run a virtual co-lo with them, for instance.
But sometimes I just want to ssh to a server and use elm.
@celesteh was recommended fastmail earlier in the month. Moved over, away from gmail too.
I have not come across such a well designed site for moving away from gmail (they handle email transfer) and the guide is top notch.
Their guides for setting up apps like Thunderbird and K9-Mail are excellent. They provide one-time passwords in the guide too.
Layout is nice and settings make sense. Price seems reasonable!
Also shoutout to Protonmail for their free service, though less refined
@celesteh quite easy to create throwaway email accounts in fastmail too.
Already making use of that for ad-related stuff like for sites I think will sell my data too readily.
I have little left coming into gmail but will retain it for the surprise important thing, like today SafeDeposit Scotland emailed which I had forgotten existed.
@athairbirb @celesteh Fastmail is also really nice if you have several domains you receive email at - I can keep my deadname accounts around just in case, but have it automatically route anything at that domain to a folder where I don't have to deal with it if I don't want to.
@celesteh I’ve been using Fastmail for some years. Does exactly what it says on the tin. Quite content to pay for a very straightforward service: I don’t even use many of their special features. Stuff doesn’t feel hidden or upsold. No weird extras.
Probably not gonna be the answer for most people but:
I use Postfix+Dovecot on a VPS. I don't necessarily recommend it because it's dangerous (any provider can get hacked but if you get hacked with this setup, you're gonna feel like it was on you and that's an awful feeling) and expensive but it's great when sharing it with friends who are also nerdy and can help.
@celesteh I've been using https://www.polarismail.com for about 4 years. 25 GB mailbox, IMAP/POP and webmail for $1/month. For $2 a month you get caldav/carddav to sync calendars and contacts too. They are based in Canada.
@celesteh I've used fastmail for about ... 3years now? great service, good product. a little more expensive at $50 a year but not bad.
It's good enough that I keep postponing self-hosting my own.
Quitting gmail
@celesteh I got my partner and self away from Google ~8 years ago. We've been using mailbox.org. They've been solid with a decent privacy policy
Quitting gmail
@Canageek We have a family setup. A standard account for $3/month for family support and some storage (5GB storage, only use it for sending files to people), and then two light accounts for $1/month each, one for each of us. So all together we pay $5/month. We use Syncthing, so we don't need a lot of online storage
Quitting gmail
@celesteh I just did this for Yahoo -> Gmail. Dammit. Now I gotta do it again.
Not entirely unrelated, I have nearly finished Chrome -> Firefox. It's taking about six months, but it's nearly complete.
Quitting gmail
@celesteh funnily, I'm trying to get away from ProtonMail, and back to Fastmail…
Quitting gmail
What's fastmail? What don't you like about protonmail? I tried it, but I don't need or want that level of security. I forgot my password and gave up.
Quitting gmail
@celesteh
But where do I get a gmail account in the first place?
Quitting gmail
@celesteh I'm doing this right now! For people willing to spend a bit of money on the process, I recommend moving to an address under a domain that they own; that way they don't have to repeat the process whenever the next service becomes evil or annoying.
Quitting gmail
@celesteh I set up an account with Infomaniak, it's a Swiss service and they are very privacy friendly and the basic account free. I'm not sure from which countries you're allowed to sign for a free email account though at the moment.
Quitting gmail
@celesteh I really like this summary
Quitting gmail
@celesteh I keep my gmail just for registering to some unimportant services (that send you spam) and my proton for real communication
Quitting gmail
@celesteh agree with this approach
Quitting gmail
@celesteh I just migrated to mailbox.org. They have tool that transfers your entire gmail mailbox to your new account. I did that and then went in and deleted 14 years of messages. Also backed up thousands of pictures from Photos and deleted them all from the server with a script.
Quitting gmail
What I'm saying here is that this is accessible to lazy people with short attention spans, such as myself.