The Google AI itself just informed me that Google can ask me for ID if it suspects that I may be under 18. Does anyone know if this has already happened to someone? I have important accounts that I need my gmail to log into. What email provider do you recommend that I use instead? I’m aware of tuta and protonmail but are they reliable that they will not one day shut down the way Skiff email did?

  • For those important accounts maybe consider adding secondary emails with a completely different provider if they have an option for that. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

  • I cannot understand how someone can talk about possible recent news as “Google AI” or “ChatGPT” “told me”. Any imagination where the AI model gets the information from? It scrapes the websites and does wohoo math. It’s not that it autonomously tapped some Google employee microphone and now it knows.

    • i have had literally one instance of proton going down for a day or so, and i have been using it for over 5 years. i dont understand why it is getting dogged on lately.

      • The most reason I see for it getting dogged on at all is that the CEO agrees with annoying orange on some things but it hasn’t bled into the product whatsoever… but mostly that they are kind of just becoming the new Google in creating this huge suite of software. That’s all connected through one account though. It’s still substantially better than Google in terms of privacy and security

        • At least they’re based in a better jurisdiction where you need to get a warrant before spying.

          • 3 hours

            And it’s e2e encrypted so there’s not much to give them besides metadata and payment info if you didn’t use the anonymous payment methods

  • I’d highly recommend getting your own domain.

    Make sure it’s something that’s cheap to renew, cloudfare registrar prices should be at wholesale price.

    Setting it up correctly can be a pain, but once your privacy friendly provider starts getting inevitably enshitiffied, you can move your email way more easily.

    I think so, at last. Never had to move from Proton yet.

    • If you get your own domain, it gets difficult to be able to send anyone an email.

      It has gotten really bad. Tons of small email domains get marked as spam by major email providers.

      • Interesting, it might’ve changed, I’ve had my domain for 5+ years by now, but if you set up all the signing keys, DKIM, SPF, and whatever properly, I never had a single issue as far as I know.

        But I never tried sending my own emails - I’ve been using Protonmail’s custom domain option, which I’m sure helps. Running your own mailserver without a trusted provider might be a lot more problematic, I never even considered it. The idea wasn’t to run my own mailserver, but to be able to move my custom domain to a different provider that supports custom domains, so I don’t have to change my email anywhere.

        I just made sure that my domain is passing all the email domain checker tests, and as long as I don’t get on a blacklist, I should be fine.

        • I second this, custom domain on Proton, DKIM, SPF, DMARC all setup, have never had anyone complain about emails not coming through.

          The only thing I’ll add is that I did actually go through a migration from M365 to Proton and it was pretty painless, this was a while ago so the process might be better now, but I just exported a PST, used the bridge connector to add proton to Outlook, then imported the PST, once it synced I got rid of my Microslop licensing and switched to the official Proton Mail app, though lately I’ve just been using the web app since I haven’t installed too many apps since switching over to Linux.

  • I generally like the experience I’ve had with tuta. Its imperfect but I’ve been happy with it anyway :)

  • Skiff was Silicon Valley bros. They took VC money and cashed in the second they got the chance. Don’t trust Silicon Valley companies.