It is a bit nuts how hard it is to switch email accounts. Although conveniently I believe gmail has a forwarding feature. Protonmail unfortunately doesn’t in its free tier (I recently switched from protonmail to self-hosted postfix/dovecot), and paying for a protonmail subscription just to forward my emails to a different email seems to defeat the point of paying for an email service.
I used Thunderbird to simultaneously access and download my gmail and protonmail, gradually migrating my ecosystem to the latter. The way I figure, Protonmail would be good, on account of being based in Switzerland. That means assorted EU protections - and now with Vichy America likely to become a thing, having the servers in a safe spot seems really helpful.
The odds of us having military action in our neighborhoods has shot up by a disturbing degree.
It’s not migrating my emails I need, it’s forwarding new emails sent to my old address. I mostly use duck addresses these days so luckily I can just change the address ddg forwards to in future, but prior to starting to use ddg’s email service I’d have a ton of services I need to change the email address for. Proton offers this service but I’d have to pay a subscription for it, and obviously I need it indefinitely if some service sends me an email eg 5 years down the line. Of course emails sent to an old email 5 years later are probably not important but it’s just convenient to not have to log into Protonmail to check if I’ve got any mail sent to my old address.
VPS in order to go offshore due to being a political organiser/having state interest in me. If my domestic state was not interested in me I would use a home lab though; it’d wind up cheaper in the long run I reckon, better performance as it’s bare metal (though my VPS is KVM so performance hit is negligible), and better control since you both own and have physical access to the server. For most people’s purposes I’m sure an old laptop or a raspberry pi would work fine so you don’t need to splash out either. I probably wouldn’t suggest a VPS unless you have the same threat model as me (ie likely to get raided & server seized, or likely to have active monitoring of your internet activity via ISP); I don’t really think it’s worth the money long term. Or I guess if you do just have general privacy concerns you could rent a VPS in a country known for decent privacy, but just for peace of mind reasons instead of a tangible threat to you.
Edit: Also depends on what you use the server for. If you want it to not be linked to your real identity you’d probably want a VPS, otherwise every time someone emails you they find out the IP address of your home network.
It is a bit nuts how hard it is to switch email accounts. Although conveniently I believe gmail has a forwarding feature. Protonmail unfortunately doesn’t in its free tier (I recently switched from protonmail to self-hosted postfix/dovecot), and paying for a protonmail subscription just to forward my emails to a different email seems to defeat the point of paying for an email service.
I used Thunderbird to simultaneously access and download my gmail and protonmail, gradually migrating my ecosystem to the latter. The way I figure, Protonmail would be good, on account of being based in Switzerland. That means assorted EU protections - and now with Vichy America likely to become a thing, having the servers in a safe spot seems really helpful.
The odds of us having military action in our neighborhoods has shot up by a disturbing degree.
It’s not migrating my emails I need, it’s forwarding new emails sent to my old address. I mostly use duck addresses these days so luckily I can just change the address ddg forwards to in future, but prior to starting to use ddg’s email service I’d have a ton of services I need to change the email address for. Proton offers this service but I’d have to pay a subscription for it, and obviously I need it indefinitely if some service sends me an email eg 5 years down the line. Of course emails sent to an old email 5 years later are probably not important but it’s just convenient to not have to log into Protonmail to check if I’ve got any mail sent to my old address.
What’s your setup for self hosting? Do you use a vps or host on your own network?
VPS in order to go offshore due to being a political organiser/having state interest in me. If my domestic state was not interested in me I would use a home lab though; it’d wind up cheaper in the long run I reckon, better performance as it’s bare metal (though my VPS is KVM so performance hit is negligible), and better control since you both own and have physical access to the server. For most people’s purposes I’m sure an old laptop or a raspberry pi would work fine so you don’t need to splash out either. I probably wouldn’t suggest a VPS unless you have the same threat model as me (ie likely to get raided & server seized, or likely to have active monitoring of your internet activity via ISP); I don’t really think it’s worth the money long term. Or I guess if you do just have general privacy concerns you could rent a VPS in a country known for decent privacy, but just for peace of mind reasons instead of a tangible threat to you.
Edit: Also depends on what you use the server for. If you want it to not be linked to your real identity you’d probably want a VPS, otherwise every time someone emails you they find out the IP address of your home network.