[gpspake]

Life pro tip (I believe that everyone should do this):

- Buy a domain and set up a custom email that represents you like [e-mail] - you own this domain and email address and no company, with the exception of your registrar maybe, has any control over it or authority to take it from you.

- Set up a dummy gmail/proton/whatever acct with a random address - this address will never be used or exposed publicly but it will represent your online email hosting acct.

- Forward your custom email address to the email provider address and configure the web client to send from your custom address.

- set your provider email account up in a local client like outlook that allows you to create a local backup.

- continue watching your previous account and updating your accounts to your new lifetime address. At some point, you should be getting minimal emails to the old account, then you can forward it to your new one.

The idea here is that you've decoupled your identity (your email address) from your webmail provider (gmail)

So google inexplicably cuts your access. Now what?

No problem. You have a local backup of all your emails in outlook. You repeat the process with a different service like proton (or a new gmail acct) with a new dummy email. Then you set the new acct up in outlook and drag all of the emails from your old acct in to the new one you haven't missed a beat. You're still sending and receiving emails to/from the same address and you can access all your historical emails in the new hosting acct because you migrated/synced them all over locally in outlook.

Losing access to your email identity is arguably one of the most catastrophic scenarios you can think of in terms of being online. This guards against that about as much as possible. It doesn't cover other services like voice and stuff but you can follow similar strategies for things like documents and files.

[WheelsAtLarge]

This is great until you lose control of your domain because you forgot to pay it or whatever. What then? Whoever owns your domain owns your email address. It's a good solution but it's got its faults too.

[tzs]

> This is great until you lose control of your domain because you forgot to pay it or whatever.

There's an easy way to address this that a lot of people overlook. Seriously, I'm not being snarky or sarcastic in what I'm about to say. A lot of people seem to really not considered this. Use a calendar.

Every major desktop OS includes calendar software, I believe, as does every major mobile OS.

Create a calendar on one of your devices and when you do something like buy a domain, but an annual recurring event named something like "renew domain" that will be due a couple weeks for the domain expires.

Get in the habit of taking a look at the calendar every day. Most also allow you to assign alerts to events to further ensure you won't miss it.

[nobody9999]

As I implied elsewhere, how does anyone manage to keep their house? I mean what if you forget to pay your mortgage?

How does anyone keep their job? What if you forget to go to/do your work?

How does anyone keep the electricity flowing/put food in the refrigerator/keep gas in the gas tank of their vehicle/maintain their internet access/etc./etc./etc.

If something is important to someone, they'll take whatever steps are necessary to keep/maintain it.

A calendar isn't a bad idea, but I assume GP has ways of making sure they do all those other things. What's different about a domain registration?

[HeatrayEnjoyer]

Those examples have tangible real world effects before they become permanently irreversible.

[Aachen]

Just like domain expiration grace periods. The person you're responding to isn't wrong in that the bank will also absolutely come for your house if multiple attempts don't reach you. It may be exaggerated but registrars are happy to sell you more stuff and always (in my experience with various providers anyway) send announcements, reminders, and notices even if, granted, they won't do as much effort as a bank

People also don't seem to have trouble holding onto other things in life with recurring fees

[nobody9999]

>Those examples have tangible real world effects before they become permanently irreversible.

And losing access to your email/other domain assets doesn't have "tangible, real world effects"?

In fact, those "real world" effects is what prompted[0] this discussion of custom domains to host one's email.

Or am I missing something?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42078868

[tzs]

I think you missed the word “before” in their comment.

Miss a mortgage payment and the mortgage holder will try to contact you through many channels. If that fails and you keep missing payments and they decide to evict you, that process takes a while and will include even more attempts to contact you including printed notices left at your house.

Miss renewing your domain and you will probably get email from the registrar about it, but if you didn’t have the foresight to set up a filter to whitelist those it might look like spam and you might miss it. You then only find out when your domain stops working.

Also mortgage payments are typically monthly. When you have to do something monthly it is a lot easier to remember than things that are yearly, especially yearly things that aren’t associated with a holiday or other special day.

[nobody9999]

>This is great until you lose control of your domain because you forgot to pay it or whatever. What then? Whoever owns your domain owns your email address. It's a good solution but it's got its faults too.

Yeah, this is great until you lose control of your home because you forgot to pay the mortgage or whatever. What then? The bank owns your home. So, obviously, you should never buy a home with a loan, right? A mortgage is a good solution, but its got its faults too.

[Aachen]

Related: .NL domains will warn you if they detect you're still being sent email after the domain expired. I think they do some analysis on' who's looking up your MX records. Of course, there's also the usual grace period

[narrator]

Might as well buy a 10 year discounted domain registration if it's your name. You'll be using it in 10 years anyway and it will be a good investment with the discount and inflation.

[trogdor]

Exactly. My business owns dozens of mission-critical domains. Their registration is all fully paid through the early-2030s.

[kirykl]

even buying an IPv4 block from your RIR and using one directly in your email has the same issue