Please, PLEASE make a domain for your own email address.

Posted on Mon 02 November 2020 in Tech

Don’t have a me@gmail.com or us@outlook.com, have a me@myname.com instead! [Google locks people out of their accounts](https://www.businessinsider.com/google-users-locked-out-after-years-2020-10?r=US&IR=T), to me loss of my email address would be a total disaster. This is the problem with monopolies and something everyone needs to think more about. Imagine a world where a comment somewhere on an unrelated social network wipes out 15 years of email and communication as well as ongoing access to that email address. That’s today and if you don’t look out for these things you can be locked out of incredibly important parts of your own digital world.

So a few quick tips:

Use a personal domain for email, don’t rely on any one service ever. With a personal domain you can keep your email address and swap to different suppliers whenever. You could try Fastmail with your me@myname.com address, and if you don’t like it swap back to Gmail if you want, try Protonmail maybe. Either way, your email address never needs to change.

Always backup your current email, use a client(like Mail or Thunderbird), and always download your mail.

Don’t use Google Sign-In/Up process ever. Don’t use any companies single sign on. With your Google Account gone, those logins are totally doomed. It’s far too risky.

Bonus tip! Take a look at [nomoregoogle.com](https://nomoregoogle.com) and try to distribute some of your life away from one company.