You could also get a private E-Mail address that doesn’t scan all your mails to make money out of it. Google tries to enprison you in it’s ecosystem by “facilitating” logins and so on. If you don’t pay with money, you pay with your data.
Both are great alternatives for only a couple of bucks a month.
Huge vote for mailbox.org. They have calendars, contract lists, online storage, etc. I’ve been able to get rid of Google/gmail almost entirely from my phone.
Also
freeincluded video conferences!I don’t know anything about mailbox.org, but I’m sure it’s way less sketchy than Google. It’s just interesting you would praise their free video conferences after posting “if you don’t pay with money, you pay with data.”
Should have said ‘included’ rather than ‘free’ since it is a paid service
Like the other commenter said, it is included in the price. It is called OpenTalk and is as secure as it gets.
Also tutamail
Can vouch for TutaMail, currently on it as I attempt all the hurdles of serting up a self-hosted mail solution.
Gmail and MS also make other providers jump through crazy hoops too to let users create a new email, lest they be flagged as a “spam” provider and blacklisted by the 2 services.
The modern internet sucks.
Purelymail is also an amazing service. 10€ per year for unlimited storage and addresses, and you can add your own domains.
Been using them with a custom domain for about 8 months and love it, no issues at all.
This is a pet peeve of mine and I’m sorry to be taking it out on you.
Protecting your data is the biggest exercise in futility in the modern era. You are using Lemmy. I don’t care what services you pay for, someone has your data. They in turn sell it to a third party, who also sells it. The world has your data and paying money to hide your data from google is really stupid.
Unless you live in an outhouse in the woods with no internet, your data no longer belongs to you. Do you think your ISP doesn’t have your data and already sold it? Do you think your bank doesn’t have your data and already sold it? Let me guess you pay Generic VPN $10/month to protect your data. Oh you bought the Fairphone and paid extra for next day shipping so you could release your data from the clutches of google. Oh wait, you use Linux and personally hand picked every line of code so your data won’t ever be stolen.
Enough with the crap about protecting your data. It’s a scam and the money you spend every month on data protection is better spent on a fleshlight.
Yeah, I got my name when gmail was ‘invite only’ :/
It actually kinda sucks. At any given time I have between 3 and a zillion idiots around the globe who, for months or years on end, keep buying concert tickets, airline/vacation bookings, get job hits, legal firm or health-care notifications … using my email (jbloggs@gmail.com) instead of (jbloggs999@gmail.com) or whatever variant they actually signed up for, since I got ‘just my name’ and they keep. forgetting. their. own. bloody. email.
And most of the time this shit is sent from a ‘noreply@wherever.net’ so I can’t even tell them they have the wrong email address. Grrrrrrr.
I really hope that is not your real email
Joe Bloggs is the UK equivalent of Joe Shmoe, John Doe etc - a common placeholder name for the average person.
Hah, no don’t worry ;)
I never thought I’d meet the inventor of blogs!
Same here. And the reasons you mention are exactly the reason I deleted that account a few years ago when I switched to Fastmail.
A couple of my friends are willing to put up with it, but always mention the volume of spam they deal with.
I’ve had my new email address for 6-odd years and only have one regular spam source - from a hack of an online shop - but as I used a username+shopname email alias for it, it’s easy to detect and automatically handle.
Now I use Fastmail’s “Masked Email” feature for each online account. When (not if) a site gets hacked, I just change the site to use a new masked address and block/delete the old one, and then it’s useless to scammers/spammers.
Same, the best one was the dude who created an account with my email but his own phone number. So I text him to try and scare him with the fact that some random dude got hold of his private info. He was unfazed and replied “my nephew set it up for me, guess we’ve got the same email address”…
There is still a woman in the Miami area who uses my email for everything. I’ve even received her completed tax documents from her accountant and was told to “disregard” when I replied to it. It’s been over ten years. My name isn’t even Alicia.
I’ve had someone’s emails for years, every once in a while I get a new one from the doctor or when they need to recover another account its so weird. But they use the same email but with a dot. Even their google recovery emails from another account
I recently signed up for a new email. I check the address sometimes before entering it somewhere. It’s not hard.
Have you RSVPed for the soccer fundraiser yet? -_-
I was there when it was invite only, child. They used to have an IM chat too.
Google still has a chat embedded in Gmail, but because Google is grotesquely incompetent they’ve never succeeded in making a good messaging service. I think they’ve had like 15, but they are too fucked up to just make one work.
One of the things I bring up if someone says “we should run the government like a business”
The hangouts app was actually sick. You could connect to Google voice and your actual phone number allowing you to:
- place phone calls from voice on your computer or phone
- place phone calls from your actual number on your phone
- send text messages from voice on your computer or phone
- send text messages from your actual number on your phone (and possibly computer)
- send ims from your computer or phone
It was available within gmail or on its own dedicated site, and it automatically collated conversations regardless of send medium.
It made communication free and easy regardless of what device I was using–then they rebranded it and made it IM only–then they killed it.
It’s still IM only but not dead. Hangouts became Chat and all your old Hangouts IMs should still be there. I use it all the time.
Man I completely forgot Gmail chat existed, and I used it for a while quite regularly.
Oh shit yeah! I remember begging a friend who got one to send me an invite. Didnt you only get like 3 invites to begin with or something?
I wanna say it was more than that, I don’t remember the number but I remember saying “damn that’s a lot.” I wanna say it was maybe like 10?
It was 10 yep.
Fair enough i thought they started at 3 and then bumped it up later
deleted by creator
I own the domain for my last name (firstname@lastname.countrycode) and get people all the time insisting it can’t be my real email. I also own a short domain based on my last name (like last.nm) which is very useful and techy people think it’s pretty cool.
May I ask, where do you come from? I use
firstname@lastname.devdomain, and even elderly people never question it. When I bought it, I was considering.pl(my country’s TLD), because I thought that people would be suspicious of the.dev, but suprisingly they aren’t.Exactly the same for me. I was worried people will not get it but it has never been a problem for almost 2 years now.
That’s neat. I had my email on a .social domain and many websites would say it was not a valid address. Now I’m back to my firstlast@gmail.com, fuck everyone.
I own the domain firstname.countrycode so my email address is email@firstname.countrycode, haven’t really had many people comment on it though. the previous owner didn’t do anything with it and I thought about buying it from him, but a few years ago he forgot to renew it so I snatched it up
I got my Gmail account because someone gave me one of their early adopter invites LOL.
Same way back in the land of 2006.
It is still under my Livejournal name hahahaha.
Yeah, I never got an early adopter invite, and by the time it launched to the public, someone already had my name. Apparently there’s some middle aged programmer who shares my name, and he got an invite.
I have this and the other people with my name give it as their own email address all the time, apparently not understanding that you don’t get the address just for existing.
it happens to me too, though my format is lastname.firstinitial, so I have more potential for confusion as my last name isn’t super uncommon.
people just sign up for stuff with it. sometimes banks even.
That’s pretty good, for how bad it is.
I have a pretty old gmail address that’s fmlast@gmail, and several years ago there was a lady with fmlast12@gmail who kept leaving the numbers off. It wasn’t that bad though, and for one or two important things I replied to help.
Ha ha this happens to me so much. I even had to help a poor dude out because his account (and stuff getting delivered) all was under my email.
On a side note, I got the firstnamelastname@gmail, but Gmail often proposed the firstname.lastname@gmail in autocomplete, with my image and all, so I just “recovered” it. Now I have both when I’m trying to ditch Google 🤷🏼♀️
Gmail addresses with and without a dot are actually identical. Mine has a dot but I also get emails without the dot.
There must be some names that invalidates your claim (I’m just bewildered if it’s true)
Like Abc Def and Ab Cdef style. Or is firs.tnamelastname valid too?
Learned something today then! 👍
Edit: doesn’t work for me
Ugh same. My first name is very common, last name moderately uncommon. I’ve gotten loads of stuff. Various quotes and invoices (vet, mechanic, window installation), invitations to child care groups, family gathering invitations (that one I think was the person writing the email address, not the person with my name).
Most of the time I just immediately unsubscribe or block or whatever and move on, but there’s some (like the child care group) I had to reach out to because that could be potentially dangerous.
Get your own email right, people! It shouldn’t be my responsibility to manage your email. Some of that shit includes your home address too.
And here I am, with a firstname@lastname.de address, running my own mail server.
- People sometimes act like this is pure magic
- Some providers only allow popular mail services on signup (fuck those), so I had to set up a GMail address that just redirects to my actual one
- My last name is really hard to spell, so it probably wasn’t the best idea, since I always struggle communicating that address verbally
The pain of running this still beats having to deal with a free provider out there that either spams my inbox with their own BS or just skims through the data to serve me ads.
I’m using my custom domain email with a hosting service (mailbox.org). Hosting on my own was a pain in the ass and you also have to deal with spam filters not trusting you.
Sadly I didn’t think to try to grab my last name until recently, and it has been owned for quite a while.
QR codes can help
Nice! I have firstname@lastname.us.
Congrats!
I have @firstnamelastname.tld since last name was taken (unrelated to me).
Typically use company@firstnamelastname.tld when giving out my email to keep track of spam so I used airline@firstnamelastname.tld when buying tickets.
At the check in the person saw my airline@ email and askes: oh do you also work for airline?
What setup did you use? I’m interested in doing this as well. I’ve already self hosted a NAS with vpn access using an RPI4 with PiVPN. It works quite well.
“Do not cite the deep magic to me…”
And of course, gmail is the only email provider.
(/s)
I have a somewhat common word as my last name.
My first two initials are ‘al’, which means “to the” in Italian.
My email is al.lastname@gmail.com
I get Italian train ticket reservation info about twice a year.
I have just my last name, and get signed up for all kinds of bullshit by people with my last name because they’ll enter firstname<space>lastname@gmail.com when signing up for stupid shit.
There was a mixup with a German teacher in France once and all of her students sent their homework to my email instead of hers. That was fun!
Did they get good marks?
I have a first name that is of Saxon origin but this name has also developed in Sanskrit independently from the Saxon name and the name is very common in India. One of my email addresses is [firstname]123@gmail.com I often get email directed to some Indian bloke. And it’s always for a different guy. I think these people don’t have an email and just make one up when they signed up for something. I even get someone’s banking communications.
Tbf im the only person on the planet with my name. I think that’s pretty neat.
For context, I have a made up last name so I know everyone on earth with my family name
In my 40+ years alive, I’ve never met anyone with my first name, although I know they exist; a quick Google search shows me at least a handful of people who have it.
My last name is an Americanized spelling of a Danish pronunciation of a Norwegian farm name. There are very few people who have my exact last name, and every one I’ve ever spoken to has been a descendant of my ancestral family who immigrated to America a century and a half ago.
Combine the two, and I’m pretty sure I’m the only person on the planet with my specific name. I’ve never had a problem making accounts with my first.last name anywhere.
Made me curious now, shame you’d have to dox yourself to tell me 😔
I mean, this is my public username. It takes a very quick Google search to dox me. Most of my name is in my username already.
I can’t think of what Norwegian name it’s supposed to be a Danish pronunciation of, tbh. Severin?
My family is originally from Sauda in Norway. Norwegian tradition used to be that your family name was the name of your home. If you moved to a new farm, you adopted the name of that farm as your new family name. They don’t do this anymore, as it got really hard to track genealogical records with families changing names all the time.
When my ancestors immigrated to America, Norway was under Danish rule, as Denmark had conquered Norway at the time and was forcing Danish pronunciation on the Norwegian language. So my family name’s pronunciation of “saw-duh” became “sov-dae.”
When my ancestors got to America, no one could pronounce my family name correctly, so they changed the spelling to be more phonetic in the English language. And that’s how I got my current family name!
Right, yes that was common, being named after the farm. Interesting family story 🙂
Though, being Danish, I have a national duty to say that Denmark didn’t conquer Norway, it was inherited by a king around 1400 and then developed into a full union in 15-something when the Swedes left the Kalmar Union. It was a dual monarchy, effectively one country, ruled from Copenhagen and standard Danish was no more forced on the Norwegians than it was forced on other Danes speaking a dialect of Danish.
The union was dissolved in 1814 when Napoleon (who was allied to Denmark), lost his wars and Norway was given to Sweden. After 100 years under Swedish rule, Norway was finally independent.
It’s been something of a national need in Norway to emphasize all the bad things under the dual monarchy, but in truth Norwegians and Danes were completely equal. Look up any major historical or cultural figure from the era and there’s a good chance he came from what is now Norway, most of the navy was Norwegian and so on. I understand the need to find someone to other so that the national identity grows stronger, but it’s a pity it’s become a narrative of Danish exploitation when that’s completely false.
I say equal, that goes for the political class and nobility, the peasants in both countries were of course almost completely powerless 😉
That’s very interesting. I learned the history of my name through living descendants of my ancestors in Norway. (Two brothers immigrated to America, while a third brother stayed behind in Norway) They were the ones who told me Norway was conquered and ruled by Denmark for a while.
Perhaps it was a mistranslation between us; I had wondered how Norway was able to preserve their country’s heritage and language while being ruled by their neighbor.
I have an uncommon Anglo Saxon first name. (Funny thing is this name is very common in India but the Indian and Saxon version don’t share the same origin) and I have an uncommon French last name. So I have every variation of my full name as a Gmail address.
First name guy right here. Bow before me, peasants!
Firstname.lastname@gmail, and @yahoo, and @hotmail (before MS bought it.)
I do too. Have it on @live.com too
The amount of spam you get must be unreal
I do. Today I mainly use it to receive auth codes.
I have just surname@gmail. On the one hand, easier to get, on the other hand, I get tons of spam from people who fucked up entering their intended recipient. It’s the type of thing that seems cool on paper and in reality carries monkey paw consequences.
My name is uncommon enough that I can always pick my name everywhere, and when I can’t it means I forgot I had an account.
