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Comment by Const-me | Hacker News Reader

I prefer my e-mails in a standalone IMAP client.

E-mail clients don’t serve ads.

For security reasons, they block linked content by default, meaning google can’t track what I do with my e-mails.

Google can terminate an account any time without any reason, if they do that, I won’t lose access the e-mails I’ve received or sent.

My screen refresh rate is 60Hz, ping from here to gmail.com 36ms, this means web interface has at least 3x latency compared to a locally running app.

I don’t care about their web interface re-designs, or browser compatibility issues like the one discussed.

Gmail can’t turn off IMAP as it would break e-mail on smartphones. Large share of these smartphones run old versions of Google Android which will never be updated, this also helps to ensure their IMAP access is here to stay.

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> Google can terminate an account any time without any reason, if they do that, I won’t lose access the e-mails I’ve received or sent.

A) Assuming you keep copies of all folders/emails locally B) Assuming Google isn't evil and won't delete all your mail first before shutting down your account, thus causing your IMAP client to sync their deletion

A) Yes I do

B) I’m not sure Google ain’t evil. Even if they’re good, if I fail security on my side, some other evil person, unrelated to google, may be able to delete all my e-mails before shutting down my gmail account. That’s why e-mail client alone is good but not enough, also need backups of that local DB.

Agreed. Just pointing out the fact that IMAP alone isn't enough. Nothing replaces backups (whether from your IMAP client or from Google's own backup service.)

Google doesn't go out of their way to screw people. The problem is their automated spammer systems pick up people and kill their accounts and all their google accounts and you are stuck. That's the problem. There's no human to talk to. It's been a problem for more than a decade.

I think by "Google's own backup service" they meant takeout, not the tapes google probably uses internally.

> Google doesn't go out of their way to screw people

We can't know that. There is no recourse when they do screw people and it would look the same from the outside whether it was an automated system or a manual one (or more likely, a mix of both).

A)Why wouldn't you?

B)That's why you do backups. (In the same vein as RAID is not a backup, IMAP by itself isn't one too).

An easy way to do that is to have an IMAP client on another machine that you sync manually.

Google does restrict push in their IMAP interface, though.

So Google still harvests/analyzes all your email data. Is this just "step1" of migrating off Gmail for good?

Just get a domain name and a cheap web hosting account and setup an email address and client through that

I have both, but not using them for e-mails. This adds another huge attack surface — my domain name’s registration esp. the MX records. I’ve read horror stories about people having their online accounts stolen this way. I don’t think it’s possible to hijack gmail.com domain out of google’s control, they might be evil nowadays, but technically they’re still very professional, I believe.

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