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Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

(giuliomagnifico.blog)
351 points giuliomagnifico | 2 comments | 22 Aug 25 17:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.408s | source
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mantra2 ◴[22 Aug 25 18:02 UTC] No.44987637[source]▶
I started the get itchy about so much of my life sitting on Google about 5 years ago, so I decided to take the leap to Fastmail and haven’t looked back.

Didn’t need to do anything special for the migration. The in house importer they offer pulled over 80GB in a day and I was set from there.

Fastmail isn’t going to give you end to end encryption - but - I think just shedding a major Google service is a massive win privacy-wise.

I remember briefly looking into Proton but the search was awful.

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ryandrake ◴[22 Aug 25 18:05 UTC] No.44987678[source]▶
This solves the "dependence on Gmail" problem (which is definitely a worthy problem to solve) but not the general "dependence on a particular mail provider" problem. The next step in this walk-down-the-risk-chain is self-hosting on a VPS, where you're now just dependent on your VPS provider, and the next step could be self-hosting on your own metal, where you're now just dependent on your ISP. Happy trails!
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lawn ◴[22 Aug 25 18:08 UTC] No.44987704[source]▶
Which is why you should buy your own domain so you can easily move to another provider.

And backup your emails of course.

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TranquilMarmot ◴[22 Aug 25 18:21 UTC] No.44987881[source]▶
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 I use my email provider's domain. And of course I'm registered with my domain registrar with a different email domain.

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mxuribe ◴[22 Aug 25 22:28 UTC] No.44990659[source]▶
Hi @TranquilMarmot, first off, i think the recommendation from @AnonC on their long term approach to registering a domain name is absolutely brilliant! Do that!

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.

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1. bsoles ◴[23 Aug 25 01:32 UTC] No.44992118[source]▶
That hasn't been my experience in US. Login.gov, Social Security, Global Entry, etc. all work perfectly fine with Proton (@pm.me) domains. At least, so far.
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2. mxuribe ◴[23 Aug 25 13:26 UTC] No.44995819[source]▶
To clarify my point, i mean that over the years, as i have engaged with *human beings* in situations that involve in real life/physical interaction (like standing in line at motrovehilces, getting passport photos at county clerk office, etc., it had been an interesting thing having to briefly explain to folks that .com, .net, and .org are not the only valid TLDs for email addresses....and where i most encountered that is gov. services as well as customer service reps.

To your point, agreed that *logins* for web site/apps and mobile apps are usually not an issue for my non- .com/.net/.org email addresses. In fact, for logins, gov services tend to be quite accomoddating and i don't ever think i had any issues there, and usually not a problem...But, years ago i *DID* encounter a couple of commercial/business/non-gov websites where they only expected .com/.net/.org email address...so it was a problem there on the non-gov website side of things...but even then, it thankfully was not very often, and nowadays its nearly a non-issue.

Again, my recommendation was just saying that for real, human interactions, if its possible, pick a common enough TLD to make life easier. ;-)