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jonhohletoday at 6:24 PM5 repliesview on HN

One of the reasons I stick with Big Email for my primary email is cases similar to this. If I host email and lose the domain one day, I’ve lost two factor on a thousand different services (the single factor on some). Big Email’s policy is to not reissue my address, should I lose it or die.

The .name scenario is even worse. One domain gives you access to tens of thousands of users email. It seems like a privacy nightmare.

I’m not sure how future auth and privacy will work, but my child lost a tracfone phone and some mixup had separated it from my account. There was no way to recover the number. If that was my personal phone, how difficult would it be to restore banking, medical, and government access to things that assume I’ll always have that number.

Doing the same with personal email seems like too big of a risk.


Replies

koeligatoday at 7:46 PM

The risk of losing your big email account is higher than losing your domain. Furthermore, if you happen to lose your domain, it will in most cases be easier to recover than a restricted account.

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sunnybeetroottoday at 6:43 PM

You can look through my history how many times I’ve brought this up to people and they just don’t seem to care. A defence is that they’ll buy the domain for a century and not care once they’re dead which is fair but the situation in this article is a valid one. I will always stick with Big Email for accounts.

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bluebarbettoday at 8:01 PM

Came to the same conclusion. With primary email I do not need multiple points of failure. The optimal solution is a contractual - paid - relationship with a single reputable email provider. There are a bunch of them.

drdexebtjltoday at 7:12 PM

I don’t see the problem if you stick with .com or the ccTLD for the country you live in.

To me, the risk these registries screwing me over is smaller than Big Email deciding I broke their ToS and shutting down my account.

I wouldn’t use these novel TLDs either.

xp84today at 7:08 PM

By Big Email are you just referring to the biggest providers (e.g. Google and Microsoft)? or is there another meaning?

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