The trick is in never ever touching the username@paid-main-provider.tld to give out to anyone. It's just for logging in.
My mailbox.org username is literally three random short Engish dict words concatnated by underscores (e.g jet_sit_gill@mailbox.org) just to ensure I'd never share that email with anyone. I only use my domain's email addresses. This way there's ZERO lock, zero fear of them giving my email to someone else and staying with the domain provider for a day longer than I have to.
For email addresses on others' domains here
- icloud.com came with the devices (I honestly have not thought about what happens to these if I have zero Apple device at one point in future :D)
- tutanota(barely ever used; just to support them I paid until they removed the 12/year plan)
- protonmail, and sdf.org (ARPA)
All of these at least let me hold on to the email address even with little resources when I stop paying or have an unpaid a/c. So little risk of email goign to someone else. And I never use these for anything important anyway.
For temp emails - duck.com, HideMyEmail (stopped using this one for new accounts though).
This does not appear correct. I lost my original account in 2013 and the handle is extremely unique, and I just tried to reregister it, and it won't allow it. ("Sorry, [redacted]@fastmail.fm has already been taken.")
Are you sure you didn't confuse domains? My original handle is on fastmail.fm, but it will let me register that on fastmail.com.
I really wish all mail providers made it easy and seamless to bring your own domain (or register and manage one in the background for you, without you having to care for the details). Obviously giving a service-tied email domain to users is a great lock-in strategy. But it's worrying that so many people have a big part of their online identity tied to Google.
(You can even sign up for a Google Account without GMail, using a third-party domain. And this is distinct from Google Workspace, or whatever they're calling it today. You get a normal, regular, personal Google Account, just without GMail and using your own non-gmail.com address.)
Email is used a single factor (either because of magic links or forgot password flows), so the impact is much larger than getting your snail mail sent to someone else.
Also, whoever takes your old residence is probably not malicious (they just want the house because they want a house), but whoever takes your email address is much more likely to be malicious (as the acquisition cost is low and it scales).
I don't think that's true. Some years ago I did a free trial with them (did not pay anything). More recently I decided to actually sign up (for a paid account) and the email address I used for the free trial years ago was not available. I eventually got that username only after contacting support and giving them the date on which I started that free trial, to prove it was me.
I use Fastmail with my own domain. I am not sure of the logic that says paying $60/year for email is fine, but $8/year for a domain is a bridge too far.
Do that, it's a non-issue, though I do agree with you that it shouldn't be a thing (or at least have like a multiple year embargo on the address).
Using domain for identification carries a similar risk though? If for whatever reason you stop renting the domain somebody else can rent your identification. You are not locked into an email provider but you are locked into a rented domain and the whole domain marketplace rules, by extension. At least with most email providers your email address is not supposed to be resold (likely with fastmail too judging by the responses).
I think the issue is why use an email provider that has designed such a glaring security hole into their system? Does it not raise questions about their judgment in other matters that are less visible to the user?
First, it’s not been established that they do have that security hole. Someone upthread said the email address they used during a fastmail trial was no longer available when they tried to sign up later because they didn’t want to give out the address again.
Second, and I don’t know how much weight this carries - but I personally know some of the people on the Fastmail team. They’re some of the most thoughtful, steady engineers I’ve ever met. Every time I’ve criticised something about Fastmail to my friends there, it turns out they’ve had the same discussion internally and immediately tell me about a bunch of arguments I hadn’t thought of which explain their final product choices. I wish much more of my software was made at companies like that. They have excellent judgement. They’re absolutely the right kind of people to host a long lived email service.
That's incredibly dishonest reasoning. Are you seriously telling me that unless people have a solution for fixing DNS, commercial email should be free to hand out used email addresses? Seriously?
Isn't it more like fixing whois than fixing DNS? It's the name registration part while "fixing DNS" seems like it carries a lot of additional baggage that doesn't map to the "service username" space.
Now that you've said what you wanted to say about how dishonest the question is, would you like to either answer it or explain why the analogy fails to hold?
Are you the type of person who thinks it's okay to dump garbage on your neighbor's lawn because governments haven't been successful at stopping pollution? Because that's the extract same rhetoric you're using.
At the very least it's weird when you consider their privacy focused marketing and the fact that it costs them like nothing to delete the data but mark that email taken.
Most prevent your username/email from being reused but restrict access or storage. From what I've seen, the delay often ranges from 30 days to years (but not guaranteed).
This way - many different providers either lock that username away and throw the key (even you can't get it again; some give you the key instead of throwing away but no space in their home until you pay again) and some just graciously offer a free plan with that address whith little or barely any resources (which is actually great and very generious of them). Which ones? Google around and you shall find.
So does mailbox do from OP. Just after some time, depending on which package you had. Eg after your light package expired, the address is free for reregistration after 90 days.
I don’t think anyone is really concerned with privacy, tho it is piled on as a reason to ban. The real issue is our adversary controlling the content the masses in the US see can sway opinions via propaganda
The "our" in "our adversary" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Adversary to who? The 0.01% who are CEOs, IP holders, and State Department goons for sure, but I don't think the average American has any reason to fear China over their own government.
Not sure the American government is really a problem compared to American megacorporations, but I suppose at this point that's kind of splitting hairs since the government's been at the beck and call of said megacorps more and more so since like 1980
If the Chinese want to control our media they're going to have to get one of their citizens to get US citizenship first. Only then can that token citizen build a media empire and engage in a massive, decades-long propaganda campaign against us.
They'd also need to bribe lawmakers to add an exception to the foreign agents law that allows the Chinese to donate to people running for US office without needing to register as foreign agents.
There are other ways to donate to nonpolitician social media owners who then donate to politicians or support through their algorithm Like allow an individual who owns a big media platform to have the first fully foreign owned auto factory in China. In Musk's case it was before the Twitter purchase so not saying that's what happened there, just that that kind of thing is an avenue.
To paraphrase, one man's freedom of speech is another man's propaganda. There is a reason TikTok was embraced by the younger generations. I don't use it, but I think the whole move only proves that US has no freedom of speech unless it is carefully curated.
edit: To all the negative reactions, argue with me you dullards instead of reactively pressing a button when you see something you disagree with. Use that wit and freedom!
Democrats didn’t ban tiktok because of china, it is also piled on as a reason. They banned it because some donors got mad that their grandkids were hearing anti-israel stuff. Remember, Trump tried to ban it several years ago and then everyone forgot about it until the images started coming out of Gaza last year. When considered this way it is a grotesque 1st amendment violation, but they'll probably get away with.
A republican majority house voted for the ban, so I'm guessing their granddaughters were also hearing dangerous anti-israel stuff (there is no difference between Democrat and Republican on Israel).
The government has yet not laid out a strong, unclassified case for that issue to the citizens. If it exists, should it be laid out as such, so these discussions become more meaningful?
Of course the data collection, i.e., the "privacy violation", arguably informs any such propaganda and allows it to be targeted and more effective as a result.
> The real issue is our adversary controlling the content the masses in the US see can sway opinions via propaganda
... but during the 2016 election we saw that Russian-funded interference efforts using FB and Twitter were pretty effective despite those being public, US-based companies. If you're concerned about propaganda, then policies should be concerned with stuff like "is this poster a real human", "does this post make factually untrue assertions", "is this poster paid to say this without it being marked as an ad", along with "is the platform doing view-point-based amplification or suppression".
Further, in Citizens United, the court effectively invited companies, including subsidiaries of foreign companies, to contribute to political campaigns as part of their free-speech rights. And there was press about foreign companies exercising those rights. So it seems inane to me to say that foreign companies have a first amendment right to pay for political ads and statements, but not to operate a service that lets users create and view posts.
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/03/citizens-united-for...
Let’s be honest, Trump supporters were going to support Trump even if he “shot someone in the middle of Times Square”.
Even when places like Fox News called the election fairly in 2020, they were roundly criticized by Trump supporters and places like Redstate kicked out life long anti-Trump conservatives.
The Wall Street Journal of all things was being called part of the “liberal media” of all things.
But in 2024, the Democrats lost fair and square. They lied and covered up Biden’s mental decline until it became more than apparent and lost any credibility with the public. They have given up on the “50 state strategy”.
I agree with you that Trump-supporters are both loyal and ruthless. And I think that's mostly a US-internal matter.
I agree with you that in 2024 the Democrats lost fair and square in the sense of not convincing people they were worth voting for.
However, Russia has continued to interfere in US elections including 2020 and 2024.
I'm not pretending foreign interference only happened in 2016, or only happened when Trump won -- foreign and especially Russian interference has been non-stop because we haven't done anything systematically to stop it. The claimed threat about TikTok is always some vague opportunity for "propaganda". But we can point to many specific cases of Russian interference and misinformation on US-based platforms. The TikTok ban is just not a serious attempt at addressing the "foreign propaganda" problem, and people that make non-specific allegations about propaganda on it without mentioning the very real issues on US-based platforms are being disingenuous.
I don’t disagree with you. But as far as disinformation, why does it matter especially on the national level? How many people’s minds were changed?
We both agree that the Democrats didn’t give the non rabid Trump supporters a reason to vote for them and the rabid Trump voters were going to vote for him no matter what came out for or against him.
We have no idea how many minds were changed. But everything public says that the foreign interference operations that are actually known to be happening are using FB, twitter, reddit, youtube and everything else, are mostly Russian, and we're shutting down TikTok b/c its Chinese owners pose some vague propaganda-related threat, which no lawmaker has described in detail.
Russian disinformation on US-based social media networks is clearly happening, is aggressive and persistent, and perhaps did swing things in 2016. If you think that's doesn't "matter ... on the national level", then surely the TikTok propaganda threat isn't worth shutting down a popular service for?
No TikTok isn’t worth shutting down. As for as Twitter, do you really need foreign interfere and propaganda when it’s American owner is putting its thumb on the scale?
China, and no one else, refused ICJ arbitration over the South China Sea. China, and no one else, is responsible for Chinese vessels harassing boats on the high seas. China, and no one else, refuses to rebalance domestic consumption vs investment. China, and no one else, imprisoned Jimmy Li. I do have to say their propaganda makes us look so good, so thanks for that.
There will be war because China starts it by deciding to invade Taiwan. They are very much preparing for it.
I'm not aware of this insidious Chinese propaganda supposedly controlling the minds of the American masses... Tik Tok just seems to be memes and nonsense as far as I can tell.
I am aware that every other social media platform in the US is being weaponized by the same 'adversaries' as well as the American government and corporations. There's a much better argument for banning Twitter and Facebook than Tiktok on those grounds, yet people go to the mat to defend every troll, nazi and spook on those platforms because "free speech."
TikTok is indeed laden with pro-China propaganda. It also censors, outright or algorithmic demotion, content critical of the CCP. It also censors tons of other stuff unrelated to the CCP.
It doesn’t even need to be ideologically aligned; simple pursuit of engagement is sufficient motive for the observed behavior.
So are youtube shorts and facebook reels (mainly because tiktok content is copied to these platforms). Falun Dafa is also on tiktok, which is very very very Anti CCP, I'm sure the CCP is playing a long game here by allowing them to put their short videos on the platform (see https://www.tiktok.com/discover/the-persecution-of-falun-gon...).
And Twitter is laden with pro-Trump propaganda. It also censors and at least promotes what its CEO and owner wants to be seen and demotes what it doesn’t want to be seen.
It’s CEO is going to have a lot more influence on policy and be a large part of the Trump administration and have an appointed position without divesting his ownership of Twitter.
You should be much more concerned about Twitter than TikTok. I wouldn’t even care about Twitter if Musk wasn’t going to become an official member of government post 1/20.
Truth Social and Gab are quite similar, but smaller still. The intent here is clearly to punish foreign influence, not domestic and that's the first amendment carve out being used to push this through.
X, Truth Social and Gab are all malign (and arguably little better than 4chan or 8chan as homes for civil discussion) but are domestic in origin.
I'd rather wade into the ocean than join any of the above, but they aren't subject to the same legal carve out.
Google pay was never able to fix the pre-compiled animation rendering issue on iOS where the first transition or animation is always janky and then it gets cached and no longer has jank.
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