Don’t Mess with The Google

Re:Don’t Mess with The Google by ocdtrekkie on Thursday November 17, 2016 @01:33AM (#12974922)

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.

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Re:Don’t Mess with The Google by chimprich on Thursday November 17, 2016 @07:40AM (#12976902)

> 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.

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Re:Don’t Mess with The Google by ocdtrekkie on Thursday November 17, 2016 @08:23AM (#12977179)

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.

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