I would also avoid using the same credit card between accounts. I used a Venmo card for my chrome extension account as an extra layer of separation.
And if you do use your gmail address just forward it and start to transition to something else. With time everything of importance has been transferred.
Set up forwarding in Gmail to your new address.
Then, whenever you log in to a website or app with your Gmail, take a moment to change it to your new address. In a few weeks, most of your important accounts will be covered. In a few months, almost everything you still actively use will be done.
I did this ~5 years ago and the only thing that still arrives at my Gmail is spam.
You can mitigate/speed the process using your password manager too.
I still use a filter in my email so that if something comes in under my Gmail, it gets a special tag that I can filter on and treat those as a todo list. Rarely happens beyond the occasional Google Meet connection.
It probably doesn't matter, but it made me feel a little better because that way Google wouldn't have direct info on to which email/domain I transfered (ignoring other Gmail contacts that start emailing me at my new address(es) ).
Making a new local account on your machine is a good first step.
This looks like perfect case for change of email, since lot of these accounts can be moved out from Gmail by changing the address that email is forwarded too.
Looks like all this hassle with generating a new email for each service pays for the second time (by ease of changing the main mail), in addition to spam and privacy protection.
You can buy a domain name for like $10 per year; I recommend getting it from porkbun.com.
Cloudflare.com is good too, EXCEPT if you buy your domain from them, you'll be required to use their nameservers until and unless you transfer your domain elsewhere (which you won't be able to do for a while). Though to be fair, their free DNS is good and lots of people use it anyway. It makes email setup slightly more complicated, but it's still doable.
Spaceship.com also has a pretty good reputation, but I think their customer service isn't as good, they're quite new, and they're owned by Namecheap (a bigger domain registrar with a much worse reputation).
Whatever you do, DO NOT buy from GoDaddy. Do not even search for the domain you're considering on GoDaddy. Literally any option is better than GoDaddy.
By far the most reliable TLD options are .com, .net, and .org. These will look relatively trustworthy for email, and the price stays very very stable from year to year. If you don't want to think about it, just get one of these. You can even still find single dictionary word domains for .org or .net relatively easily.
Do not buy any domain marked "premium". This means the owner of the TLD can change the price at renewal as dramatically as they want, for any reason (e.g. if you have a website hosted at that domain that becomes popular). Your $20 per year domain might suddenly become a $300 or $3000 per year domain for no reason but greed, and you wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
Non-premium nTLD's (.club, .horse, .rocks, .theater, etc) can increase quite dramatically in price, BUT the price is required to be set the same for all domains using that nTLD, so they can't target any individual person for having a successful website or whatever. Also, you can pre-buy up to 10 years, which locks in your price for those 10 years. I'd still not recommend them for a primary email, but it's better than buying a "premium" domain. Just be aware that the yearly price might unexpectedly increase in the future.
Some country code TLD's are also good, but for email, probably stay away from the ones that spammers like to use.
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Anyway, what I actually originally meant to comment about is: if you set up forwarding from gmail and don't check that account regularly anymore, I recommend setting up a gmail filter rule that forwards all your gmail spam to you (their regular forwarding setting leaves it out and just sends it to the gmail spam folder). It's a little annoying to have to re-flag some of the spam as spam in your new email, but gmail has a habit of marking non-spam as spam for me, and if you're not regularly checking that spam folder you can easily miss important email.
Seconding this. Tthis is exactly what happened with the .sexy TLD: https://www.reddit.com/r/Domaining/comments/uia8pc/sexy_tlds...
After a year or two losing Gmail becomes an inconvenience; after a few more years it is nothing. As everything is now on your own domain name you can switch providers without affecting anything.
That's what I did about 5 years ago and my only regret is not doing it earlier.
Pretty sure just moving emails would have take a lot less effort. I had the advantage of keeping the domain until I was ready to move, now imagine Google just turned it off one day and what your workload would be. I shudder to think about having to deal with that.
create icloud account.
use their custom domain email setup (free btw) - https://support.apple.com/en-us/102540
Start replacing important account emails with your custom domain.
Every time you get an important email in gmail, login and update.
Bonus: icloud let's you create catch all emails, so you can create many burner emails such as hackernews@mydomain.com
I got a custom domain. I still host it on google, because I know how impossible it is for small companies to have a reasonable program to deal with insider threats. Because of that, I think only one of the giant companies can realistically provide secure email. And the google app suite is great. Now that I pay for google workspace, there's support and appeals available, and if they ban me anyway, I still control the domain and can regain access to everything.
I have not been able to delete the old address, even after 3 years. There are some things like Google Fi that can only use a non-workplace google account. Very, very rarely, I still get an email that matters on it. But I got to the point where I could stop checking it in about 2 months, and now I look at it about once a week quickly, more out of habit than anything else.
The switch was annoying, but not "hard". It was worth it.
Imported all my past mail on day one, forwarding meant I had one inbox only, and I only sent mail from the new domain. A few gentle “please stop using my old address” conversations with family.
After a few years you'll notice you stop bothering to check your Gmail and you can delete it to close the address.
If you need motivation, skim the /r/GMail subreddit and see how many people are getting locked out daily.
I vaguely recall encountering a service that only accepted addresses from a whitelist of big providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.), even @icloud did not qualify.
I've never once run into a service with such a restriction, but I can imagine someone being that short-sighted. I have seen services that only support "log in with Google or Facebook", which is comparably terrible.
Who? Never heard of them, and it sounds like there's a good reason for that.
make another mailbox (another provider - migadu, fastmail, proton, whoever) that has IMAP as well. (selfhosting.. is PITA. only if u really need it).
install some standalone mail-client - thunderbird, clawsmail, applemail, or k9 , aqua on android, whatever. Attach both mailboxes into that. Find out how to copy an e-mail from one folder into another.
Folder by folder, select all mails, copy from one mailbox into the other. Will take time.
(Beware, some clients (apple) will fuckup the mail-date, anything older than 5 years becomes 5 years old. or it shows like that. YMMV.)
i have made this multiple times, for 20+ years of mails...
What's the playbook for migrating away in this situation?
I switched to fastmail with my own domain.
Although I am increasingly concerned with its longevity since there's a non-zero risk that Proton might shut down SimpleLogin since Proton Pass has its own alias feature.
Current state of OIDC should be pretty much standard across most providers - it put it that devs need too make the push to support alt login providers for preventing vendor lockin in identity like were currently barreling towards in hardware/software.
You're right that having a vanity domain for your primary email address isn't for the faint of heart. There isn't any realistic advice for the average person because it's not for the average person.
Sure, you'll likely miss some emails, but otherwise it's safe.
Its not evil of Google to say "Here is an allotment of steeply discounted tokens, but you can only use them with our services."
Could be true, but a somewhat depressing worldview.
"Google Shuts Down Gmail For Two Hours To Show Its Immense Power"
Notably some model providers explicitly allow that very flow, while others will ban you without notice.
> At what point does the software being covered by an open license changes the responsibility model
When you agree to an open license that says you're liable for anything and not the author of the software.
> THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
The correct and sane thing to do is to send them an email, with at most a 24 hour suspension. If they keep doing it despite being warned then by all means fire them.
A general problem for Google products is that everything is mixed together.
That's exactly what they did, plus Gemini CLI and Code Assist, which are the same product in different formats.
The web doesn't work like that. The operators of google.com saying you must only use Chrome to load it is a ridiculous concept. It's not spoofing to use your own access credentials on your own computer to access your own account on an HTTP API.
I have no idea what you are talking about. Chrome? Are you sure you are replying to the right thread?
Unfortunately the government is full of corrupt geriatrics who do not understand technology and are paid to continue not understanding technology as they sign bills prepared for them by ALEC.
I hope this is sarcasm. A permaban as the first action is never a good idea.
As a hedge, you can google.com/takeout on a monthly cadence.
At least a few years ago when raspberry pi nodes were cheap, you could set up rClone to sync the `TAKEOUT` folder of your gdrive account locally and then encrypt it and shove it into backblaze. Then set up a monthly reminder to quickly request a takeout and make sure that you choose the "deliver to google drive" option.
I'm the customer, not the product.
If people lost access to their whole accounts that would be a major crisis for Google users. But it doesn't seem that that was actually the case.
This doesn't make it super clear, but, the submission from a week ago when bans got handed out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47115805
However many stories appeared where people tried to claim that their whole Google account was banned to gain traction.
Unless it is clear that a full Google account has been banned we should push back on any story that claims this.
By now they lost any trace of goodwill they ever had and are guilty until proven innocent.
I agree that the digital death sentence is really bad and doubly so seen that many are using single-sign on tied to their Google identity but...
> with a company that notoriously has no way for the average human to contact a human is not worth the risk
There's definitely phone support for paying Google Workspace users: don't tell me there's not, my wife got Google support on the phone more than once and they've been helpful.
And it's not a crazy expensive subscription either.