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Australia’s internet providers are ditching email, to the disgust of older customers
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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Technology
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Whilst I agree and sympathise with people on how difficult it is to change your primary email address (been there), the outcome will be better for them. They are no longer wedded to an ISP purely because all their mail goes there.
To liken it to something more tangible; when you move house, you need to change your mailing address. For renters, that can be often and is just as painful. Or when your phone number changes and you have to update your contacts. The difference here is who is pulling the trigger; the end user vs the provider.
Gmail is a great option, as is Proton Mail for the security conscious and tech savvy.
This isn’t to excuse the ISPs; it’s a shitty move on their part and the people using these mail accounts will likely be older technically challenged folks, but it is a logical one from a technical perspective. They may have also inadvertently taken the only thing away that’s creating stickiness between them and their customer and driven them into the arms of another ISP.
after you spend two paragraphs explaining how it is inconvinient to depend on someone who can change anything at their will, your conclusion is to move to google? 🤣
Well it’s just an example of course 😂 but to be fair, mail is the core business of Gmail.
Mail is a value-add for ISPs. You could argue any mail provider could up and change things and the only true way to get around that is hosting your own mail server, but I was trying to be semi-realistic.
core bussines for google is harvesting your data and sell them, having a mail is just one of neccesary tools to achieve that goal ;)
if anything, my advice in such situation would be get your own domain. after that, if you decide to host it on google (i would not recommend it, but it is your life) you are no longer their prisoner, because you can get up and leave at any time.
Can’t argue with you there :P but I guess what I mean is from a service standpoint, Gmail is mail, ISPs provide internet.
For me personally, Google is not my friend and I run my own mail server on my own domain and have for years. It’s quite involved though if you want good deliverability.
I think Proton is probably the happiest medium between privacy-respecting and all-out DIY mail server. Though I’m sure there are many others too :)
Plus one for Proton.
Proton isnt great for oldies. You cant use default email apps and the like without a bridge, and last I checked they arent available for mobile or Chromebooks, which means they would have to use the first party app. Thats just another change thats not worth it for oldies who dont like change.
Also migrating away from protonmail is a nightmare. You cant when set a "forward all" rule.
I admire protons ethos, but the UX sucks.
I'm old and found the mail, vpn, drive and proton pass fine.
You're also on lemmy. You might be old, but you are also technically literate. Im not saying PM is bad, I used it myself for ages until I decided to set up my own domain for business reasons so moved to fastmail.
Its just for the type of oldies who use ISP provided mail dont like the change of leaving the ios default mail app to go to the protonmail app
Now if the USPS could just figure out a virtual address system we'd be golden.