Ask HN: Any chance of email address portability in next decade? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Any chance of email address portability in next decade?

1 pointgalkk2 comments

I'd argue that email now is one of the central parts of your online identity, and seeing how some providers can terminate your account and everything related to it in a second is actually scary.

How do you think, what is the chance that there will be legislature etc that will allow you to separate your email address from a provider and own it/be able to port it? Are there any RFCs that explore that idea?

I understand that I can buy my own domain, host my server or connect O365/GSuite to the address on that domain, but it's complicated and doesn't solve the problem of letting everyone know that your email, that you've used for past decade, or more, is now obsolete.

> How do you think, what is the chance that there will be legislature etc that will allow you to separate your email address from a provider and own it/be able to port it? Are there any RFCs that explore that idea?

Zero, I hope. We need domain owners to be in control of their domains.

> I understand that I can buy my own domain, host my server or connect O365/GSuite to the address on that domain, but it's complicated

Not complicated unless you want to do self hosting. But if you want to pay a provider the complication amounts to a sum total of installing an MX record into the DNS data for your self-owned domain.

> and doesn't solve the problem of letting everyone know that your email, that you've used for past decade, or more, is now obsolete.

It is not emails fault, nor the current providers fault, that you failed to understand you were being locked in and didn't get out sooner. I've had the same email address for about 20 years now, it has been attached to three different ISP's and about five different IP addresses over that time, but never once have I been locked in to any provider. Why? Because I own the domain.

But if you never go through the conversion, you'll never get unlocked, and the longer you delay, the more troublesome it will be to switch.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com