Every time a read a story like this, I feel an atavistic desire to self-host eveything. But I've had my Google account for 20 years now; the die is cast.
Every time a read a story like this, I feel an atavistic desire to self-host eveything. But I've had my Google account for 20 years now; the die is cast.
If you never start you'll never be free. It's also not all or nothing. You can keep things with Google, self-host new stuff and gradually move over things that make sense to mover over.
How does one self host an email server these days and not get flagged into oblivion?
At least use a service with actual customer support like Fastmail, and backup your email with an email client that downloads copies of your email to your computer.
I mean Proton seems like a good (although extremely expensive) option, but these small companies could go out of business on a dime which is a problem when the effort to switch is a titanic undertaking.
If you use your own domain, it's just as simple as switching some MX records (and the TXT or whatever for DMARC etc)
creating backups is crucial. this includes all the contacts, texts of saved emails, photos and so on. Many of these ppl who get locked out fail to create local backups and rely on apple's cloud storage. big mistake.
Even just simulating "what if I lost this account" and seeing what you can't access (have your wife change your password and not tell you for a month or so, say) - tells you what you'll be missing.
The tendrils can run deep.
I have a strong desire not to self host the “live” copy of anything. If my server goes down, I don’t want to have to drop everything and fix it (e.x. if I’m on vacation, I don’t want to have to take a laptop incase I need to fix any server troubles - I go on vacation not to be on call!).
That said, keeping a backup of everything, decoupled from any account I don’t control, gives me huge peace of mind.
I'm slowly decoupling things and hosting parts of my infrastructure myself. Let it be on a cloud server or a home machine.
Doing everything and/or all-at-once is not practical, but having backups for most critical infrastructure helps a lot, and when it's rolling, it rolls without effort.
One can go step by step and call it's done when it becomes too much to bear or satisfactorily decoupled.
> But I've had my Google account for 20 years now
Just realize this: the longer you play this game, the higher your odds of getting banned. Once it hit me, I quickly decoupled from Google. It's like playing satoshi roulette for 0.5% gains. You keep winning until you get fully wiped.
What do/did you do about other people having your Gmail address as a primary contact?
I just contacted them all and gave them my new address after I was locked out.