I rarely log into my Google account. I use it because gmail was better than hotmail 9 years ago, and because I had a youtube account longer ago still. After pinching youtube's user data for their own malicious ecosystem I had an account with them, might as well use it right?
I've been wary of using "Cloud services" for anything other than email since the beginning. And with email I only used it because who pays for email right?
I do. I pay for email now.
I've already been using linux on my desktop and my smartphone-needs are light enough that I could just go back to a flip-phone. I use a murena one now. Well, "use" is a strong word when it just sits on my desk and lights up when I get an email but you get the idea.
The continuous encroachment of big tech hit home a few years ago when I lost access to minecraft because Microsoft had decided I wasn't going to be allowed to log in without giving them my phone number. Fuck that!
Still, this was just a minecraft account. It wasn't connected to my old hotmail account and was unimportant besides an easily pirated game (And I paid for it so Microsoft's legal department can SMD)
Today, my mother tried to send me an email. It bounced. Apparently Google's prying eyes didn't like whatever she had to say about contemporary politics…
I decided to check my filter settings to see if maybe something had been automatically turned on since last time. What greeted me was a message many people have seen before:
You didn't provide enough info for google to be sure this account is really yours
My password was right, they just wouldn't let me log in.
My recovery email was fully functional – I received and input a recovery code and was led to the same screen. They just wouldn't let me log in.
The account recovery page wanted me to log in. It just wouldn't let me log in.
My email clients are still connected. I can send and receive all the email I want… For now anyway. I'll take advantage of this window to move my accounts over to a new email address.
So here I am. I bit the bullet and bought a domain name. I may have to pay for it, but if the email service turns out to be untrustworthy I can just point the domain at some other host and won't have to go down the list of every account I have and change them.
As with all webhosts there was some questionable behavior involved, like trying to sell you whois protection in a post-GDPR world, but it's still much nicer to know I actually own my email.
So thanks for screwing me over and being the final push I needed to get my own domain Google, real good move!
Isn't it funny how email works? You need a domain for an email address to sit on, but ICANN requires an email address to register a domain name. Is it even possible to get either of them starting from scratch? It's a grotesque recursive mobius strip of chain mail and privacy invasion.