1. Have your own domain name. You can change provider from Z to Y at the flash a DNS record gets updated. Email is designed as a federated service, but to be so your email _address_ needs to be too.

2. For files, use a cloud solution and have 2-3 computers updating their local copy (home PC, work PC, phone, small Pi box acting as server). I have a Digital Ocean box running ownCloud, soon to change to nextCloud. Put your code or next essay on Git.

3. Don't trust any service provider, especially if they're not dependent on explicit income. You can still have everything in one place, but that place is many places at the same time.

4. Don't store what you don't need to. Complication and confusion also comes from hording. Don't need it? Delete it, and be assured it is completely deleted.

Don't forget about the guy whose twitter account was stolen because a hacker got access to his email _because_ the weak link was a custom domain and poor security at Godaddy. The domain was hacked, giving the attacker full access to email, and therefore ability to change passwords, transfer ownership of a prized twitter account and more. It has been discussed here quite a bit. The folks that answer phones at domain registrars don't usually have adequate training and social engineering is common.

Then don't trust a registrar.

Get a domain directly through a NIC that offers that directly.

Can you recommend one? I've never heard of this.

Many NIC's support this but they aren't really setup to handle individuals (they prefer resellers do that) expect to pay a lot more for the privilege. You can usually find the Registrar by just going to nic.tld (e.g. http://nic.io/)

Your email is always the keys to the kingdom, but I trust Gandi a lot more than I trust Google.

GoDaddy is probably the worst choice someone could make. 2FA is mandatory for email and domains.

Point one here is the BIGGEST. If you do nothing else, own your domain name, and forward mail to a service provider of your choice. In my case, I made my new email address forward to Gmail, and then started changing everything over to use my new address. Then, when I moved providers to FastMail, all I really had to do was re-point my domain name.

Even if for some reason I lost my FastMail (pretty unlikely), I'd just repoint my domain to a new mail service, and I could easily recover all my other accounts. And of course, my email archive is backed up locally, so there's no risk of losing that.

> If you do nothing else, own your domain name, and forward mail to a service provider of your choice.

Even this may not be sufficient. I had a domain name registered through my ISP (UKFSN). At some point I had a disagreement about payment with my ISP, who refused to discuss it. Instead of replying to my messages, they disabled all my domain records and my emails started bouncing. I think this was illegal (and eventually I forced an apology and compensation out of them - long story). Anyway, I would recommend only having a domain name registered through a dedicated registrar who you are not using for any other services.

This is good advice too. I actually have my domain name and web hosting through different companies, particularly for this reason, if I have service issues or something with my web host, I wanna make sure I can switch web hosts or threaten them with the wrath of God or something, without worrying about my domains.

I foresee a slight chicken and egg problem here. Registering a domain requires an email address, so it seems that I would need a third-party email address anyway.

Bootstrap and go from there.

Next cloud looks good, cheers

> ownCloud, soon to change to nextCloud

Why the switch? A quick look at both hasn't resulted in a clear winner in my mind.

The founder and most of the development community has moved to NextCloud. ownCloud is mostly the old corporate people maintaining status quo, from what I understand.

I think not using anything Google is probably the wisest move as they have made it very clear on numerous occasions that they simply do not care about customer service.

The problem is, they're so damn convenient.

> The problem is, they're so damn convenient.

And this is the crux of the problem. "Oh, that'll never happen to me" until it does. I've been asked several times, "why do you go to the trouble of [hosting your own e-mail | not having the same mobile # on SMS as on Hangouts | using ownCloud instead of Google Drive | and other greatest hits]". Stories like this are why. They're not at all uncommon, they're a disaster for the people affected, and they're clearly not a wake up call for Google to get any better about their free-to-the-end-user services, so I've no motivation to change my practices.

I've got a domain name and an E-mail address on it that forwards to my gmail account, but I find out of laziness I usually end up directly specifying my @gmail.com account when signing up for online services. It might be time to slowly start switching over to using my personal account, so, in case I'm ever banished from gmail it's simply a matter of pointing my forwarder to a different E-mail provider.

Sooooo many accounts to switch over though, probably will take a few days...

When you update email addresses, I'd strongly recommend having a catchall and then [email protected]. Makes it easy to see where spam comes from, and more easily delete it.

As someone who has done this, including project fi, I maintain my own backups on a personal server at home and another one on a VPS.

Owncloud / nextcloud provide automatic syncing of photos if need be. I sync up all my important documents but as of now I don't see the point of backing up my emails. The last missing piece is syncing my contacts which is also possible in my current setup.

With that said, I am still going to use Google services because of their convenience. I just like knowing that the data I care about is safe.

Especially so, with the rising gig economy. To more and more people, their digital assets and how and when they access them are how they make money.

devil's advocate(or in this case, google's i guess), unless you do something shady prohibited by google's TOS(which i recommend you read and understand if you value your data), google is pretty good about everything. even when they shutter services they give you plenty of advance warning and have options to takeout backups of data easily always remember google offers all of these services for free and you're still getting more value than you paid for

> even when they shutter services they give you plenty of advance warning

The original article is about how this is absolutely false in the case discussed.

Parent was probably referring to closing down entire products (e.g. Google Reader).

Ah yes, that makes more sense. Thanks.