
Leave Gmail in 10 steps - adipasquale
https://blog.dipasquale.fr/en/2018/12/02/leave-gmail-in-10-steps/
======
petilon
If you have Gmail click this link, it is an eye opener:
[https://myaccount.google.com/purchases](https://myaccount.google.com/purchases)

Google knows every online purchase you ever made, every line item, the price
you paid, the address it was delivered to, and so on.

Keep in mind that Facebook and Google also combine this data with offline data
about you purchased from other companies, to complete the picture.

UPDATE: Here's an example of Google purchasing data about your offline
purchases: [https://www.fastcompany.com/90230910/google-has-been-
secretl...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90230910/google-has-been-secretly-
tracking-your-offline-purchases-with-help-from-mastercard)

~~~
ian0
> Your purchases and reservations are brought together from across your Google
> Account, from sources including: Orders placed using Google services, like
> Google Play Store, Google Express, or through the Google Assistant. Order
> receipts or confirmations received in Gmail.[1]

Wow I have a bunch gained from scraping my emails (there is an info icon that
tells you the source). Mostly larger multinational merchants (Amazon/PSN),
obviously the scraping isn't very advanced. Only covers a tiny fraction of my
online purchases with receipts in gmail.

I also see a bunch of purchases made by a guy with the same name but on a
different continent who frequently gives out the wrong gmail address (I get
random mails from their friends from time to time). Thankfully they aren't
buying uranium :P

Once again with google data collection I cant help but get the feeling that
this is something that wasn't specifically designed for advertising. Why would
they provide that link in the first place and draw attention to it when they
could just do it behind the scenes (as Im sure the rest are)?

[1]
[https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7673989?p=orders&...](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7673989?p=orders&hl=en-
GB&visit_id=636798360529048418-174744030&rd=1)

~~~
adetrest
They probably let you see it because of gdpr, and wouldn't have before that
law?

~~~
hyperman1
I'm not sure. This is not a data collection, it is a filter on an existing
data collection.

The data itself are your emails, which they keep because they are your email
provider, and they already show them to you whenever you want them.

Which provides a very interesting workaround for google against the GDPR. But
IANAL so probably I am missing something.

------
ricccardo
> In exchange for free mails, would you let your postman open your letters,
> read them, and insert ads related to their contents?

Note that this is not the case anymore:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-
ads.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html)

We never did that for G Suite, but with this announcement we also stopped
doing it for consumer.

Disclaimer: Googler working on Gmail. Please stay :-)

~~~
mixedmath
I don't mean to hijack this thread, but I wonder: from my perspective, it
seems that the trends in gmail have been towards a bulkier, slower design. And
I hear tech friends complain similarly.

How does the Gmail team feel about it? It might be that the team thought that
a heavier page with a mighty footprint delivers an overall better product. Or
perhaps the team has an entirely different view?

------
jackewiehose
> First, I strongly suggest you buy a domain name, so that you really own your
> mail address

Any opinions on that?

I did so years ago (mostly for the reason of being independent of a mail
provider) but meanwhile I realized you never "own" a domain. It's always just
rented. It would be bad if someone gets in control of my domain so I just hope
this won't happen before I'm dead... And even then it could be bad if it
happens (although not for me anymore).

~~~
rckclmbr
At $10/year it would cost $800 for your lifetime. Not too shabby to put
control in your hands

~~~
PenguinCoder
More like $10 a year for the domain and $20/mo or more for the actual email
hosting and provider.

~~~
KozmoNau7
$20/month?

I pay less than $3/month for web/mail hosting, full cPanel setup with 10GB
storage and unlimited traffic.

~~~
PenguinCoder
$3/mo for unlimited number of inbox/addresses, or $3/mo per inbox/addresses?
Note, I'm not talking aliases, I'm talking 'per user, entirely separate
inbox/login'

~~~
extra88
Dreamhost Shared Unlimited has no user limits for $7.95/month (paid annually)
and I think that includes one free domain name registration.

[https://www.dreamhost.com/hosting/](https://www.dreamhost.com/hosting/)

~~~
krageon
If you're going to host your own email for privacy reasons, don't get a
package at a US provider.

------
bpye
I have no complaints with Fastmail, great experience.

Android mail clients however - I really wish K-9 Mail felt more modern, it's
perfectly usable but the ancient UI makes it less nice to use.

~~~
berkut
I've just switched from gmail to fastmail, and I'm not very impressed with
Fastmail's iOS app (it's pretty slow to start / open / retrieve emails) or the
lack of offline support it has.

TBH, other than the annoying ability to too easily swipe emails left and
expose the Archive green button, I really liked the Gmail app - it was
extremely fast and easy to use.

Anyone have any suggestions on a mail client for iOS? I _can_ use the Apple
one (and am doing currently), but I don't really get on with it for some
reason...

~~~
rimliu
Outlook. Seriously.

------
nilact
I wonder why nobody mentioned zoho.com (from India) and products they offer.
They have docs as well as other apps that any business needs and no privacy
issues.

~~~
marklyon
And an unreliable registrar that takes them down at will.

~~~
nilact
It seems that issue was related to automated algorithm. For long term solution
and this never happens again, Zoho decided to be registrar themselves.

More information can be found out at:

[https://www.zoho.com/service-updates/blog/update-on-zoho-
ser...](https://www.zoho.com/service-updates/blog/update-on-zoho-services-
disruption.html)

------
jmole
Why doesn't anyone every mention actually paying google and using GSuite,
instead of using their free service?

~~~
unixhero
Or using adblock

~~~
sudarshan_sar
I think the author is concerned with a much deeper issue than a simple ad
blocker.

~~~
unixhero
Yeah. I don't disagree with the op.

But advertisements nuissance are not the reason. They are so easily dealt with
by using adblock.nin some incarnation.

------
coldnose
If anyone's gone through this trouble already, care to explain how you did it?
I've been thinking about rolling a VPS with postfix/dovecot, but it seems like
such a hassle to maintain, and I'm not super confident in my ability to secure
it.

~~~
craftyguy
Find an email provider, sign up/pay for service, and use it. I recommend
buying a domain, so you can have a fairly static email address even if you end
up changing providers later on.

Rolling your own email service never seemed worth it to me. You'll have to
deal with backups/recovery, maintenance, and any quirks associated with the
big mail places rejecting mails from your service. I'm almost certain someone
will chime with "but it's not bad!", well, it's not bad until you're on
vacation and suddenly your mail service goes down and now you have to either
go without mail (stuff sent to you will be rejected), or stop what you are
doing to fix it.

~~~
freedomben
But it's not bad! Jk, I'm a devops guy so I set up servers and infrastructures
for a living, and I still think it's a pain in the ass. Mostly getting TLS
working is the hard part. If you don't get it right, your emails will all go
to the spam folder of the recipient, or just not deliver at all. Hell even if
you get it right, that _still_ might happen.

------
blueberry_47
Any recommendation on an iOS mail app. I use the Apple one, which is fine if
uninteresting. The Fastmail app is not very modern looking which I
superficially care about. Any reasonable looking non-Apple mail app reads my
email or collects my data.

~~~
virusduck
I hate to say it, but Outlook is actually really nice.

~~~
diffeomorphism
Heavily disagree. The web version on mobile (android; both firefox and chrome)
feels slow and works badly on low bandwidth connections and touch support
feels badly designed (e.g. selecting multiple messages, working with
attachments). On desktops/laptops the imap support is also subpar with
problems with showing multiple drafts for one email in the web version.

This would maybe be excusable for a small startup, but for a company the size
of Microsoft that is an embarrassing showing.

~~~
amaccuish
I think they're referring to the Outlook app, not the service

------
BuckRogers
I've been on this un-Googlify trend for almost a decade now, as a beta Gmail
user I ran into the "wow, I'm really neck deep in Google telemetry" wake up
some time ago.

The only stuff that I can't let go of is Maps as the author noted, and
Youtube. I'll always use the best services and I like both.

Outlook.com solves a lot of the problems the author detailed with calendar
items and contacts, as well as provides the storage necessary to host your
email archive.

I'm willing to be datamined, but not by one monolith like Google for every
service. That's really the problem and what people feel uncomfortable with.

------
gnasr
This article looks like an ad for fastmail.com

~~~
mark_l_watson
apologies for being off topic, but: I am a long time Fastmail customer, but
the law passed in Australia yesterday has me somewhat concerned. Fastmail is
an Australian company. Anyone else concerned?

~~~
my_first_acct
As far as I can tell, it changes nothing, assuming that your email was sent as
plain text. Although Fastmail stores your email on encrypted disks [1], it of
course has the encryption keys for these disks. Even before the new law, they
would have been subject to any Australian search warrant requiring that they
hand over your email, and would not have had any technical reason for not
complying.

In general, unless you and your correspondents are using PGP or some such,
your email is readable by anyone who can obtain a search warrant in the
country where your email provider resides. (Protonmail may or may not be an
exception [2]).

[1]
[https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/security.html](https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/security.html)

[2] [https://www.wired.com/2015/10/mr-robot-uses-protonmail-
still...](https://www.wired.com/2015/10/mr-robot-uses-protonmail-still-isnt-
fully-secure/)

------
chrnad
Does anyone know if you can disable email on GSuite (i.e. change MX on my
domain to Fastmail), but keep the rest? I use my GSuite account login on a lot
of sites, I've got shared photo albums etc.

~~~
ianmf
I do this. I use Gsuite but not their email. I changed the MX records of the
domain to the other email host.

------
codewritinfool
Not using Fastmail, but I'm working on this now. Bye, Google.

~~~
oarfish
Isn't fastmail an Australian company? If so then they'll have to backdoor all
software in the future since parliament passed these insane new surveillance
laws.

~~~
dewey
Email is plain text anyway so why would it matter? If you want to keep it
private you’ll have to encrypt it anyway and then all their backdoors wouldn’t
change that.

~~~
jakevn
There is a great difference between in-transit encryption and at-rest
encryption. The former is not really comparable, as the existence of the email
at rest will forever be vulnerable, in contrast to the time of transmission. A
window of seconds versus years.

------
ggm
The example mbox sender frequency script is measuring the mbone list at isi. I
was on that list back in the nineties.

Here's a video from one of the top posters.

[https://vimeo.com/56349011](https://vimeo.com/56349011)

------
Upvoter33
Which other emailer has threads, snooze, and tabs? (need all of those really;
hard to move without them) I do hate that I can't just pay for gmail and avoid
the crappy ads...

~~~
craftyguy
> threads

Threads have been supported since, well, decades (message-id, In-Reply-To).
Most modern mail clients support displaying messages in thread format.

> snooze I originally missed snoozing, but now I just create a task any time I
> need to address something, or tag/flag it for follow-up.

> tabs

I'm not sure what this is. Can you explain?

> I do hate that I can't just pay for gmail and avoid the crappy ads

Just shows that google thinks that displaying targetted ads based on the
contents of your emails is more valuable than you throwing cash at them.
That's terrifying.

~~~
joshuamorton
As another person mentioned, your email contents aren't used to target ads,
and you can pay for gsuite.

~~~
craftyguy
As another person mentioned, if you have gmail and visit here, google knows
about every purchase you have made, the price you paid, etc:
[https://myaccount.google.com/purchases](https://myaccount.google.com/purchases)

They're not reading your emails, right? How else would they know this much
information?

~~~
joshuamorton
That's not what I said. I'd ask that you reread my comment. Your emails aren't
used for advertising purposes. There are a host of features that require
varying levels of email analysis (from spam detection to putting flight times
on your calendar to reminders that you'll be receiving a package).

None of those things require targeting advertisements based on email content.
And that's what isn't happening.

~~~
krageon
Perhaps not in the email interface itself, but you would be hard pressed to
convince anyone that it's not shoved in a machine learning model somewhere.

~~~
joshuamorton
I mean it's literally explicity in the privacy policy. They always kept email
based targeting separate from broader data and stopped using it at all for ad
targetting a year or two ago, seemingly because corporate (gsuite) users were
concerned that the data might be used anyway or something, I'm not really
sure.

I don't think you can get more explicit than "Consumer Gmail content will not
be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change."

[1]: [https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-
in...](https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-
enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/)

------
threatofrain
Has anyone found anything which competes with Google Calendar?

~~~
cweagans
The fastmail calendar is excellent, IMO.

~~~
news_to_me
Idk if it does anything beyond normal CalDAV stuff, but honestly, I'm not sure
what more you'd want for a personal calendar. Does GCal have any useful
exclusive features?

~~~
threatofrain
Have you had success with 2 time zones for the same event? I know there's a
setting to enable it, but I haven't had success.

~~~
climb_stealth
My fastmail calendar experiences:

\- timezone support is great and an explicit feature. You can pick the time
zone when adding events and there is a dropdown at the top to view the
calendar in the respective selected timezone.

\- you can scroll the calendar view flexibly and not just switch from month to
month. You can for example scroll to see half of previous and half of current
month. This fills me with so much joy and I can't understand why no one else
does it.

\- you can't give someone else write access to your calendar. This is my major
gripe with it and the reason I'm still actually using the gmail calendar in
the fastmail interface.

~~~
maxxxxx
Does it allow to omit timezone for an event so it always shows at the same
time? It drives me crazy when I plan a trip to a different timezone that
Google always shifts the times when I am there.

~~~
climb_stealth
Just had a quick look and you can do that. You can set the time zone as
Floating Time and it will be independent from the time zone.

------
amaccuish
Moved from gmail to a VPS with dovecot, postfix and SOGo (provides xDAV, webui
and activesync). Never looked back.

~~~
txtsd
How do you deal with emails sent to gmail getting labeled as spam by default?

Also, qq.com and mail.ru block mails citing IP frequency limited and spam
message rejected, respectively. I've found no way around these.

I just send one personal email a day, on most days.

~~~
amaccuish
I've never had that. My setup mostly did DKIM and all that for me. Never had
mail arrive at the other end into spam. For incoming, I use rspamd. It's taken
some training but it's a lot better now.

~~~
txtsd
My SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are on point. No idea why it goes to gmail's spam.

~~~
krageon
It's possible your emails are malformed or contain weird headers, that gets
them flagged very heavily as well.

------
timwis
The feature that makes it so hard for me to leave Gmail is the automatic
bundling of promotions, updates, social, forums. That has made managing my
inbox actually manageable. Is that any way to get a feature with another email
provider?

~~~
dsamarin
It will be hard for me to leave Google Inbox because of the peaceful feeling I
get from easily snoozing or marking my emails as done by the end of the day. I
don't know if I will ever feel as accomplished and with as little distraction.

~~~
timwis
Snooze is a bit easier; boomerang is a service that offers that for at least
outlook as well.

------
ozten
I did this 3 years ago and have not regretted the choice.

------
alsothrownaway
I went with Namecheap as my Gmail replacement. I can use my own domain and
setup was instant. The interface and admin panel are very clean which is nice,
but $10/mo for one inbox doesn't really say "cheap" to me. Overall I am quite
happy, though.

