I want to change my main email. I’m using gmail right now. Which free email host do you trust and recommend? Hopefully one that I can open from the phone and the desktop, instead of from the web.

  • beta_tester@lemmy.ml
    6·
    3 years ago

    For many people email is not really that important. While I agree that it would be better to fully own your email address (domain) it’s just not that important. If I don’t have access to my email, I’ll let my bank know that I use a different mail.

    I would pay protonmail 10 bucks a year for my mail address just to support them but they don’t offer that. I only need it for sometimes amazon and who knows. But it’s certainly not worth 50 bucks a year - unless you own a business that highly depends on it. I don’t use it for communication with real people. Just websites that need to prevent spam or want to communicate with me for notifications.

    • Evan@lemmy.ml
      41·
      3 years ago

      I think you are forgetting that

      1. We are on c/privacy, this is important to OP
      2. Most services today will send you an email to verify account changes, while (almost always) not impossible, it’s a pain in the ass to recover your account for every single service.
      • beta_tester@lemmy.ml
        2·
        3 years ago
        1. It was imoortant to OP that it’s free and has a client. You may assume that it’s privacy respecting but owning your own domain doesn’t increase your privacy. You will standout and every mail send to @XY.Z is an email to you.

        If privacy is important, use PGP or selfhost your email. But the amount of work that is needed is not worth the trouble for an average person.

        The chance that you need to recover your account us so tiny that you can neglect it. And if you know that you’re doing shady stuff withyour email account, just selfhosting won’t be enough either.

        • Evan@lemmy.ml
          1·
          3 years ago

          The domain does not provide extra privacy, but it does not ditch extra privacy also. buttman@gmail.com vs butt@man.com are two emails addressed to you, but no one knows who you are.

          Rather, it provides a framework to be a digital nomad, switching email providers at a whim while not needing to do account recovery. An @protonmail can’t do that.

          In the later half

          I essentially read the “what’s the point of privacy if you have nothing to hide” argument. I don’t do drugs or run a torrent tracker.

          mistakes do happen and especially with services featuring a free tier, they have so many users they don’t have time to double check their actions or care about providing good support. I already provided two examples of pretty notable people getting banned from Google for unknown reasons and still not being able to get their account back.

          Closer to home, let’s look at Lemmy. As it’s still small, the admins interact with the users and think twice before banning. Reddit on the other and is the opposite, because they quite literally have a million times more people to worry about.