[Ace777]

I do not. Becoming dependent on a large e-mail provider is only because of continued willful ignorance.

Better education for how digital services work and how to properly handle your digital identity is the right way to handle this. Implementing regulation and cementing the "major" e-mail providers who have the resources to comply will only deepen people's dependence on these corporations.

[aboringusername]

So what do you propose then? How do you "properly handle your digital identity is the right way"?

Do I have 15 emails addresses with 15 different providers? When a form asks for my email address I can only give one, what happens if that provider goes away?

What if a government doesn't like $provider and seizes the business? Now I can't get a reset link/change my password/prove my identity...Many government online services ask for your email these days, so you don't really have much control over that. If you said I am [e-mail] and blogs.com dies, you're toast.

Please do explain.

[Ace777]

You went from dealing with being banned by google to the general case of an e-mail provider disappearing. This is different. In one case you have control ( choosing not to deal with google because of their arbitrary judgments when it comes to account termination ) in the other, you really don't. ( Random calamity that befalls your email provider ).

If your email provider goes away, you're screwed. Nobody accounts for this situation. Doubly so when you used an identity provider that has gone bust. The question is, how do YOU imagine imposing regulations on mail providers will change anything in a case like this?

Store your credentials, make backups of your emails, don't use identity systems. If things really do go bust, you'll retain access until you can get manual changes made to your accounts.

The other obvious solution is to have identity/e-mail built-in as part of citizenship and be gauranteed by your government.

[dageshi]

Register your own domain and point it at your preferred service, if you lose access to that service you still retain the domain and you still have your email address.

If you want to solve this problem you have to spend some money somewhere otherwise you are simply demanding providers give you services, for free, forever, not something that seems realistic?

[severino]

But can't the same problem happen if you, somehow, lose the ownership of your domain? I mean, I don't know what the actual assurances are, but if there is any chance that you may lose access to your domain (for causes other than forgetting to pay to renew, ofc), even temporarily, that would be the same as being banned from Google. Or even worse, because having your Google account locked means you can't use it but noone can use it either; however, if somebody now has your domain, they could be able to impersonate you.

[dageshi]

I think that is very very uncommon and when it does happen there's usually some kind of legal process involved. In other words I don't think you're going to have your domain yanked away without some reasonable amount of warning and ability to dispute.

In the worst case scenario you'd have time to setup a new domain and move everything over. Annoying yes, but again extraordinarily rare.

[paulryanrogers]

Consider that our lives are increasingly complicated. What an adult is expected to know and understand has grown to the point that 16 years of formal education are required.

As email's importance approaches a utility like physical postal service it's reasonable to expect some regulation. So long as the regulation is independently developed and balances the needs of consumers and producers then it shouldn't be too burdensome for competition to exist.

In the worst case taxes could pay out to whichever provider one chooses.