[guptaneil]

It's true that every service has to deal with the same policy and lockout problems, but that doesn't lead to the conclusion that the risk is the same. I pay for FastMail because

1. if something goes wrong, I can reach a human without needing to write a viral blog post first. Other services pay for a customer service department.

2. I trust FastMail more to not shut down their product because they got bored. Sure Gmail will probably not go away, but I'm honestly not as confident about Google Workspaces or whatever it's called now for individuals.

3. I'm tired of acting like using products from an ad company is a good idea. People happily use an email service, browser, OS, and more from the modern DoubleClick without a second thought.

[gary_0]

Any company with a business model that takes your money and gives you service is inherently more secure than one that sells your eyeballs to advertisers in exchange for giving you free stuff. The former companies have a direct incentive to keep giving you service as part of their core business. The latter are really only paying attention to the money they get from advertisers.

[the_snooze]

>Any company with a business model that takes your money and gives you service is inherently more secure than one that sells your eyeballs to advertisers in exchange for giving you free stuff.

If anything, companies try to double-dip and serve multiple masters. See: the security and privacy mess in smart TVs. Last I checked, LG wasn't giving their TVs away.

[jasmer]

"is inherently more secure than one that sells your eyeballs to advertisers in exchange for giving you free stuff. "

Not necessarily, and in fact this case I would disagree.

I trust Google's security 10x more than that of FastMail.

The 'advertising company' reaps in billions of $ with which they can get all sorts of good engineers for 0-day research, exploits, updates.

They have a lot more of a reputation to defend.

Without hard evidence, I suggest that Google is probably 'more secure' than FastMail. Certainly more than 'Mom and Pop Mail'.

Except for the bit where they read my email and advertise to me on that basis, which is admittedly an ugly tradeoff.

[stickfigure]

> Any company with a business model that takes your money and gives you service is inherently more secure

I just finished reading Postmail For Dummies. Since I'm charging $5/mo for email accounts, you'll obviously want to migrate your gmail over since my solution is so much more secure.

[411111111111111]

This comment is so ironic considering that Apple has just lost their lawsuit in the EU for doing exactly the same.

Wherever you paid for the product seems to have little impact, the reality is that all tech giants carelessly invade your privacy with no recourse for the user.

[somerandomness]

The solution is to subscribe to Google One

[mindslight]

Humans executing security policy (inherently imperfectly) versus ML algorithms executing security policy (deliberately imperfectly) is not the main issue. The real problem is that the industry hasn't purposefully sat down and hammered out the full contours of user verification. Each company just starts off with simple passwords, bolts on a few other arbitrary mechanisms, and then forces that on their customers - residual probabilities and collateral damage be damned.

Strong passwords, hardware security keys, shared secrets meant for offline storage, SMS challenge, other accounts, snail mail address verification, notarization (governmental identity), voiceprints, time delays, etc. Each one represents its own tradeoff of convenience versus reliability versus forgeability versus privacy.

Users should be able to pick their own policies. For an email account where I've already provided my real world governmental identity, I'd most likely prefer snail mail address verification plus notarization (combined with notifications to the account and a waiting period). Whereas for another where I've deliberately avoided spilling my governmental identity, I should be able to express that a password plus hardware security key is the highest level of verification there will ever be.

Furthermore, companies need to make their own rules for falling between everyday access to account recovery explicit, and allow users to express preferences there too. There should be no cases of the wind blowing from the east so we require account recovery today, forcing users to be policed on what IP addresses they're coming from, etc.

[PascLeRasc]

I can't find any information on what happens if you stop paying for a Fastmail account. 1Password for example freezes your account in read-only mode. It's documented that Fastmail will re-use addresses for free trials and when a user requests to cancel [1]. It isn't clear what would happen if for some reason your card expired, they stopped accepting it [2], or your bank messed up and blocked the transaction [3].

To me, this introduces a new way to lose your account that isn't there with a free email service like Gmail.

[1] https://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?p=622760

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29988359

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/d1okxu/cha...

[garciansmith]

I had an issue with the credit card used to renew a Fastmail account. Fastmail sent me emails about the issue, but it took a couple days to fix everything on my end. Even after the renew date passed my email functioned as normal, so there seems to be, at least, a grace period. Not sure what would have happened if it went on for longer though.

[brewdad]

This is why paying for your own domain is so important. I keep mine prepaid for multiple years and my registrar sends me at least 5 emails before I would ever be at risk of losing it. My email address won't be getting reused until either emails are no longer relevant or I'm dead.

[waynesonfire]

The only time I've been locked out of e-mail is when my credit card company incorrectly labeled the payment to the provided as fraud and the so called company that you can call and reach a human to discuss issues with, was not very sympathetic to my case and I didn't have e-mail access for 4-5 days until the issue was resolved.

Just an interesting data point. It wasn't my intention to label the payment that way. It is what it is, but, just as OP seems to be believe, I would expected the issue to be resolved faster. Though, perhaps if I were to receive a "fraud" label on a non-paid account maybe I would be blocked to this day.

[malepoon2]

4. I like separate services/accounts. So many stories of people being locked out of their account because of YouTube or something.

I feel much better now that my Google account is only used for Android and YouTube.

[amf12]

> I pay for FastMail because - if something goes wrong, I can reach a human

You can do that with GMail too, upgrade to the workspace account. I had some issues with it last week, and I was able to reach a human and get it resolved soon.

This is regardless of Google. Reaching humans is impossible with "Outlook" free email accounts, but amazing with Microsoft 365.

[samstave]

I used to use gmail as primary and yahoo as spam.

Now I use proton as primary and gmail as spam.

gmail's quality right now is absolute garbage.

[howmayiannoyyou]

Left Gmail b/c for months it locked me out periodically for too many hits. Neither they nor I could ever identify the source of this.

Moved to Fastmail. No issues since.

[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

Good it's a paid product. I had an account with a free email provider openmailbox.org, which closed down. I lost my mail box and, together with it, a valuable domain I bought in 1995.

[balboah]

Used fastmail (and proton) for a year or two. Had to go back to google because there’s just too much spam otherwise

[lolinder]

I've been on Fastmail for several years and I've had no spam in my inbox at all. Not a single email. That's a better track record than Gmail for me.

[coffeeblack]

I am using Protonmail for some years now. I have maybe one spam mail per week in my inbox, everything else is filtered correctly.

[jp191919]

I haven't have any problems with spam on PM, but I also don't give out my email addresses willy-nilly. I have junk emails for that.

[csomar]

Another one: I can link my domain. I backup my emails regularly. Getting locked out of fastmail is a temporary disruption for me.

[dylan604]

2) Why in the world would Gmail get shut down? The veins of treasure to be mined from within the user's emails are vast and endless. It is quite simply a mother lode. The only bigger source within their direct control is the search input screen.

[kmlx]

> The veins of treasure to be mined from within the user's emails are vast and endless.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en-GB

> We will not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads.

the veins dried up back in 2017.

[unixhero]

It will not go down, but you can get locked out by AI policies. This is likely.

[mattnewton]

I think they are talking about some change to workspace effectively breaking the service for them. This has some precedent (with the old “dasher” personal accounts having growing pains for some people migrating IIRC) but also seems like a very low risk.

[8ytecoder]

OP specifically mentioned Google Workspace for individuals - that's what I used to use so I can use my own domain and so "own" my email address. There's a good chance that gets shutdown. Google Workspace for large orgs or Gmail does not have the same risk.

[jboy55]

Having read some 'digital archeology' where people gather data off old MainFrames and Minis, that at some point someone could just buy all of @NetZero.com, netscape.net or ZipLip's email servers and opening up all of the stored email for a fee ($99 per email address). How much would you pay to read your former business partner, ex-girlfriend/boyfriend, or that person you crushed on email?

[ineptech]

I agree, but I do worry about it being ruined some other way - forcing me to use Chrome, censoring emails, bundling it with a paid service, ad-blocker-blocker, something else...

[jeffbee]

"I can reach a human" is a huge security vuln. I don't want people social engineering my identity provider.

[nirvdrum]

I'll take the limited risk. I've had to contact Fastmail support and it was a breath of fresh air. It's a bit absurd that something so fundamental as email has essentially no support from a company as large as Google; it's not a bug-free product.

I suppose eliminating humans is a security win, but HN is full of stories of AI systems failing and banning accounts for essentially nothing. Not having a human to appeal to is far riskier to me. It's not like these AI systems can't be gamed to knock people offline. I'll take the risk of having humans involved -- it's far less stressful.

[theptip]

An extremely underrated (and insightful) point to consider.

More generally, how do you actually get a measure of risk between two providers, when the absolute frequencies of measurable events are very low?

It seems plausible to me that FastMail could have 10x or 100x the level of security incidents as GMail, and it would still net out to an undetectable difference in the number of public complaints.

If we had internal data… but of course we don’t.

[jefftk]

This isn't just a hypothetical: a few years ago Fastmail support was socially engineered into giving access to a HN user's account: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15855081

[ocdtrekkie]

On the contrary, I would argue this is the exact mindset that makes Google so bad at securing their systems. Every single large Google platform is also the leading distributor of its kind of malware, ultimately because computers are stupid and once you understand what they are programmed to handle you can work around them. Humans can become suspicious and can be held accountable, computers do what they're told and nobody is taken to task when something goes wrong.

I would contend that if you cannot reach a person, you cannot trust a system. And that has generally held in the entire history I've been on the Internet. I chose my web hosting by who had phone support, I've had the CEO of Fastmail respond to my support tickets before. I have yet to be betrayed or compromised by a single platform where humans were involved, but automated systems have failed me regularly.

This is true of offline systems as well. If you want a security system to protect your business, you may have keypads and sensors and things, but you also have a monitoring center staffed by people who can see events in real time.

I think our industry has had a fantasy that complex enough math problems can provide real security, but I would hope by now the cryptocurrency market would've put that silliness to bed by now.

[GeekyBear]

> I can reach a human" is a huge security vuln

Google's algorithms make entirely too many errors.

"I can't get my account back unless a viral account of my problem makes the front page of HN" is an unacceptable risk.

[xdennis]

"For Security!" has become a universal cudgel:

* For your own security (from theft) we'll hardware lock your phone. Best to throw it in the dumpster if you forget the password.

* Can't allow people to repair their own hardware. What if kids try to do it and end up burning the whole apartment block. Best to forbid it for security.

* You can't film public institution: it's a security issue.

* And now: can't allow humans to operate business decisions. What if they're socially engineered? Best leave everything to automation and fuck you if you slip through the cracks.

It's funny because in the airplane industry, even though planes basically fly themselves, companies still want pilots, because that's what people are best at: solving unique problems as opposed to repetitive issues.

[LeifCarrotson]

A critical question is what threat models you're worried about:

Are you worried about an individual interested specifically in you, Jeff B, to get something worth many thousands of dollars that they know you have? Don't put a human in the loop, they're going to track you across Facebook/LinkedIn/local government resources, they're going to know more about your car registrations and when you bought your home than you know about yourself, and they're going to be able to very convincingly social engineer a human in the loop if one exists.

Or are you worried about a group of hackers continuously crawling the web for a database dump from some service you and ten thousand other people signed up for, or some flaw in the authentication sequence to automatically sign everyone in the database and all their contacts a spam network for pennies per person? Their scheme falls apart if they have to call a human, because it's just not worth the time to look up your public records and talk to a human about you.

Second, what happens after you get hacked? Are you more concerned whether you no longer have access to something very important to you? For example, if you've distributed business cards or have contacts stretching back decades with [e-mail], losing that account might mean an old friend or business contact fails to find you again. Having a human in the loop for the last-resort password reset can prevent completely losing access.

Or are you more worried about someone getting access to the data behind your login? You've presumably got backups, so you'd rather no one ever had access again than some malicious third party got the password to your crypto wallet, SSH keys to your website, or other private data.

Those have very different ideal responses. Unfortunately, most people tie both categories together in their single Google account, or in an Amazon account tied to both shopping and AWS resources.

[Juliate]

You do want that. But with proper (actual) procedures in place.

The opposite of that is, you do not have a way of recourse, ever. Even states have some.

[NovemberWhiskey]

>I don't want people social engineering my identity provider.

How do you balance that risk vs the risk of losing control of your identity altogether due to a technology control malfunction etc. though?

[godshatter]

I'm not sure that "better scream loudly on social media" is any better of a solution.