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Comment by Klonoar | Hacker News Reader

I avoid Google when possible, but... can we stop saying shit in these articles that isn't proven true? Google doesn't release your email address if you delete it. Squatting isn't an issue there.

When we just start saying things that are proven incorrect it makes the entire discussion look like a bunch of spooks, it's not helpful.

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Sorry! I should've been more clear. I'm keeping it so there's no chance of them releasing it without my knowledge down the line. Whether their policy right now is to release it or not, I feel safer by not deleting the account.

FYI, Fastmail does recycle names if you use a fastmail.com address, so stick to your own domain if using their service.

Yup! I'm aware. I purchased their 3 year plan for 2 accounts using my own domain names.

Fastmail is not a good privacy first solution. People do share it as a great Google Mail alternative, but it's not more privacy friendly [1].

[1] https://www.quora.com/Fastmail-or-Protonmail-Which-one-is-tr...

"Privacy friendly" is more than a binary "has end-to-end encryption or not" when it comes to e-mail, especially given the issues laid out in the quoted document (which the quora answer then dismisses, arguably not having understood the basis for them or at least not properly establishing why they think it still provides a benefit). In nearly all cases you have to trust your provider in the end, so the more important question is "which organization do I trust the most".

It's a good point.

As an Aussie who vaguely follows Aussie politics. I know that at the very least the current ruling party has some pretty funny ideas about internet privacy [1][2]. So it kinda scares me that Fastmail is based there.

That said, I'm currently using Fastmail since switching to it from Gmail a few months ago. The service itself is excellent. As far as I can tell, they don't seem to actively scan the contents of your email to build a profile on you like Google does [3]. So, at least for now, there's that.

[1]: https://www.cyberscoop.com/australia-encryption-backdoors-la... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Austral... [3]: https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy.html#sharing

> they don't seem to actively scan the contents of your email to build a profile on you like Google does [3]. So, at least for now, there's that.

I thought G stopped doing that for mail?

Really? That must be recent, because when I stopped using Gmail late-ish last year, it was still doing that kinda-cool-but-still-pretty-creepy thing of overlaying airline reservation information gleaned from emails onto Google Maps.

You'll still get the overlay but information from Gmail but aren't served ads anymore based on the contents. It changed somewhere in 2017 iirc.

"Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change." is what they said in places like https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in...

This does not say they will stop using the metadata for ad personalization.

I would love for someone to correct me on this one.

Google parses and collects purchase history (purchases, subscriptions, reservations) from Gmail.

See https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7673989, or go to https://myaccount.google.com/purchases, https://myaccount.google.com/reservations, https://myaccount.google.com/subscriptions.

I think like this - I don't only have to reject them, I have to let go. It's not just the usage, it's the perceived importance and dependency too.

> there's no chance of them releasing it without my knowledge down the line

That's not a guarantee. Companies can and do shut down accounts for inactivity, sometimes with no warning, e.g.:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18715866

That's true at the moment, but there's also no way to know what Google will decide to do with it in the future. Presumably if the account is deleted, it might not be possible to veto that decision in the future. Better safe than sorry, right?

Yeah, but they may also decide that OP's account is inactive, close it and release the address anyway, like Yahoo did.

I don't know how Yahoo went about it but Microsoft for example gave plenty of notice and announced that accounts that haven't been touched for X years will be recycled. When I'll make this move (soon) I will definitely squat the account even if I just end up scheduling sending a mail to myself once every X days.

In parallel I would keep an eye out for policy changes. Like when Google will inevitably tell me that in order for the service to stay free I have to provide a minimum amount of private data per month :D.

I would say that there is a difference between actively sitting on an email address and passively doing so or deactivating it.

To actively sit on the email I would leave in place all security alerts, 2FA, strong password, etc.

I would want to be alerted of any change in circumstance that affected that email.

If you deactivate, if you passively ignore communications, if you drop security... then you've taken the security of something that represented your online identity for a period of time, and essentially are being irresponsible about it.

Far better to just dial usage down, whilst dialling security up, and then to let it tell you if circumstances change.

That was true for Yahoo too. But only up to some point. Then they not only released deleted emails, but even emails that have not been used for a while.

That made me lose my Yahoo email to somebody else and caused all kinds of headaches.

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