[HN Gopher] Fastmail to end support for operamail.com email addr...
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       Fastmail to end support for operamail.com email addresses
        
       Author : alexmcc81
       Score  : 37 points
       Date   : 2021-04-15 21:16 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.fastmail.help)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.fastmail.help)
        
       | poglet wrote:
       | Fortunatley the process for changing to to another alies is
       | trivial, buy I imagine this would be extramly frustrating for
       | many people.
       | 
       | Many services make it difficult to change login or email (My
       | Steam login is an email I havent used in over 15 years).
        
         | ficklepickle wrote:
         | Ugh, paypal is bad for this. I have to keep an ancient hotmail
         | account alive, just because it is the email I used to create
         | the account 10+ years ago.
         | 
         | I can login with my more recent email account, so it would be
         | easy to forget the old hotmail account is even tied to it.
        
         | wlesieutre wrote:
         | Does this not work?
         | https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3176-RTK...
         | 
         | Or when they say "Steam Support will immediately email you a
         | link to click on to verify your new email address" do they mean
         | it's sent to your old email address where you can't get it?
        
       | tyingq wrote:
       | Wait a couple of years and I bet Opera lets the domain expire,
       | and someone will pick up a relative treasure trove of email
       | traffic for $10.
        
         | deeblering4 wrote:
         | My bet is on a domain squatter snapping it up and then
         | reselling it for with hugely inflated asking price.
        
       | jraph wrote:
       | > The operamail.com domain is owned by Opera, not Fastmail. We've
       | handled mail at this domain on Opera's behalf since Fastmail
       | staff bought back the company in 2013. Opera has since advised us
       | that they will no longer allow us to handle mail through this
       | domain.
       | 
       | Why though?
       | 
       | How come Fastmail handles mails on Opera's behalf, and why Opera
       | now prevents Fastmail from doing it? How come they couldn't
       | manage to agree on a way to avoid losing their users' email
       | addresses?
        
         | floatingatoll wrote:
         | Fastmail was called "Operamail" until they bought themselves
         | out from Opera in 2013.
        
           | AndrewDavis wrote:
           | Fastmail was originally an independent company that was
           | acquired by Opera. Later they became independent again.
        
       | dltj wrote:
       | Your email address is too important to leave in the hands of a
       | third-party provider. This isn't to say that using a third-party
       | provider to run your email is a bad idea. You should own the
       | domain, though.
        
         | guitarbill wrote:
         | True, but an added complication is that you have to be really,
         | really careful about your domain. You have to trust your
         | registrar, set up 2FA, and make sure it never expires, etc. So
         | in the end, owning your domain isn't foolproof either, it's
         | also another point of failure (similar to Google deleting your
         | account, although one you may have more control over).
         | 
         | For what it's worth, I use Fastmail + a custom domain and
         | couldn't be happier. But I'd hardly recommend it to everyone
         | for personal email.
        
           | throwawaysea wrote:
           | As someone considering either Fastmail or Protonmail, could
           | you share what your experience is like and why you chose
           | Fastmail?
        
             | joshe wrote:
             | 15 year Fastmail user here. Fastmail has been great, no
             | downtime, and I don't really think about it at all. Good
             | web client and you can do filtering if you need to.
        
             | Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL wrote:
             | Same setup as the comment you're answering to.
             | 
             | They've just been super reliable and mature for me. No huge
             | updates that force me to adjust. Interface is nice and
             | clean, uptime and service super reliable. Everything just
             | seems to work for me (aliases, forwarding, filters, good
             | Android app), and the pricing is within reason.
             | 
             | I actually use their web interface and official Android
             | app. I'm surely no power user, but have used various
             | providers over the years until I settled with Fastmail
             | (seemingly for good). It's difficult to decide whom to
             | trust with e-mail but to me they seem trustworthy. I still
             | like to have my own domain, so I could in theory take it
             | with me, if I ever started being displeased.
             | 
             | In general: Paying for a service (especially e-mail) is
             | invaluable (my data not being mined), also for potential
             | account recovery (didn't use their customer service often,
             | but when it happened, it was decent).
             | 
             | I can't comment on ProtonMail but especially with e-mail, a
             | proven track record is gold, and Fastmail has it.
        
             | hosteur wrote:
             | I recently did a big survey of the mail hosting market. I
             | settled on migadu. Have used them for two months now and am
             | very happy with them. Consider checking them out.
        
             | ProAm wrote:
             | You have real customer support (a person) who gets back to
             | you in a timely fashion and is always helpful. The android
             | app and web app are intuitive and easy to use. I switched
             | from Gmail to Fastmail a few years ago and couldnt be
             | happier and it's cheap.
        
           | djrogers wrote:
           | Owning a domain with a registrar like Hover (or if only for
           | email, through your mail provider) is really not that
           | complicated or difficult. You get an email once a year that
           | it will be renewed, they charge your card, and it's done.
           | 
           | And 2FA? Yeah, if you're not already doing that for PayPal,
           | Venmo, eBay, and others, you're not gonna add it for your
           | domain. If you are already doing that, it's no extra burden.
        
         | AdmiralAsshat wrote:
         | And yet you literally can't run your own mail server in most
         | situations. ISPs will block you.
         | 
         | What's the solution?
        
           | Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL wrote:
           | Running your own mail server, having problems due to shared
           | IP is only one of the problems. Some more:
           | 
           | Spam filtering for one. Uptime and updating without downtime.
           | You would absolutely need redundancy (complexity of the
           | solution required starts building up quickly). Keeping tabs
           | on mail server security and the vulnerabilities discovered in
           | your particular software stack. A 15 second down time means
           | an important mail might not reach you. If your mail server
           | crashes due to unknown reason at 4 am, do you really want it
           | to be your problem to fix? And it will of course happen when
           | it least fits your schedule for the day. On most days I could
           | live with my website being offline for a few hours because
           | I've screwed up, but with E-Mail?
           | 
           | The solution?
           | 
           | The more you think it through, own the domain, yes, but use a
           | mature and reliable (and paid for) provider you trust to do
           | the hosting for you. For someone technical enough to securely
           | own a domain and not let it expire that seems like the best
           | solution really, unless maybe you own your own hosting
           | service? :P (but then, technically I guess it's not your own
           | private mail server either)
        
         | Aardwolf wrote:
         | Don't you also depend on a third-party for your domain, though?
        
           | kroltan wrote:
           | Yes, but if one goes out of business you can buy your domain
           | from someone else! Or even transfer it, if you are warned a
           | nonzero amount of time in advance.
           | 
           | Being able to keep your address across service providers
           | being the important part here, that way your online life
           | doesn't get in a huge jumble when your provider goes away.
        
             | johnvaluk wrote:
             | I've hosted email for myself and some other users for
             | decades now. We all own our domains and aren't getting any
             | younger. I'm a little terrified of the responsibility I've
             | taken on and have no idea what I'll do when we start
             | dropping like flies. Renewals will lapse, allowing
             | squatters to snatch up our domains, read new incoming email
             | and impersonate us. I'm not thrilled with depending on
             | third parties, either, but now I wish it was someone else's
             | problem who might outlive us and exercise a small degree of
             | ethical oversight. Maybe there's a business idea here...
        
         | toomuchtodo wrote:
         | Perhaps it's time for the development of a standard where your
         | email address isn't tied to a domain; instead, email is
         | addressed to an identity and the underlying plumbing
         | automatically handles routing and delivery. Very similar to how
         | your mobile phone number is portable between providers.
         | 
         | We can't expect everyone to own a domain to control their
         | messaging sovereignty.
        
           | umanwizard wrote:
           | What should it be tied to? Who would maintain the mapping of
           | names to addresses, and wouldn't this just be reinventing the
           | domain name system?
        
             | vbezhenar wrote:
             | You own private key. Public key is your identity. Public
             | key could be linked to facebook, twitter, github accounts,
             | etc, so you can easily discover or verify people.
        
               | [deleted]
        
             | toomuchtodo wrote:
             | DNS is for service discovery, not identity discovery and
             | routing. I leave the rest of your questions for the
             | standard to be developed. I don't have all the answers, but
             | am willing to pay people smarter than me to figure it out.
             | Accept this sub thread as the official Request For Comments
             | :)
        
           | thombles wrote:
           | Sounds a lot like the nomadic identities in Hubzilla and the
           | Zot protocol.
           | 
           | https://zotlabs.org/page/hubzilla/hubzilla-project https://zo
           | tlabs.org/help/en/developer/zot_protocol#What_is_Z...
        
           | flurdy wrote:
           | Wasn't that the idea behind .name TLD initially? Until they
           | sold out and became yet another ccTld
        
             | johnvaluk wrote:
             | Wouldn't that approach also be doomed to failure? How would
             | you provide a unique domain to every John Smith in the
             | world?
        
         | hyakosm wrote:
         | Yes. I also made the choice to pay for my email hosting from a
         | reliable provider, it's cheap (1.5$ month) and I'm considered
         | as a customer, I can have a support with real humans.
        
           | adenner wrote:
           | Care to share which company?
        
             | toss1 wrote:
             | I use KolabNow, can strongly recommend them for
             | reliability, security, support.
        
       | jbverschoor wrote:
       | The problem is that you don't know for sure where your email has
       | been used.
        
         | thombles wrote:
         | An underappreciated benefit of using a password manager
         | consistently. It might be a long and unpleasant chore but you
         | can have some confidence that you're updating everything that
         | matters.
        
       | sneak wrote:
       | I recently wrote a guide about how to stop relying on a domain
       | you don't own for receiving email. I've heard a ton of positive
       | feedback about it. This incident is a really good example as to
       | why your whole email address should always ultimately be under
       | your own control (i.e. at a domain you own).
       | 
       | https://sneak.berlin/20201029/stop-emailing-like-a-rube/
        
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       (page generated 2021-04-15 23:01 UTC)