Considering how vital ones email account is today, it's time for laws that prevent providers from pulling stunts like this on your mail account, no matter whether it's free tier or not.
So, under a GDPR reasoning https://gdpr-info.eu/art-15-gdpr/ do you have a right to a copy of your emails even if they have blocked your account? Unless they have deleted all your data I think it would be a yes.
The question is if they have to give you your emails if they still have them. I think it would be decided they would have to. It might be worth getting ready to be blocked, get blocked, and then demand the data to set the precedent actually. But I am lazy; the virtue of a programmer, the vice of a concerned citizenry.
Anybody can buy a domain for the price of two coffees and have full control over their email addresses. There is no excuse for being locked in by google. Even if somebody wants to use google's UI, the emails can be forwarded to google, and at the same time backed up somewhere else in case google shuts down the account.
If you consider how vital one's email account is today, it's time to put down some money.
*edit: Buying a domain often comes with an email service. There is no need to run a mailserver.
Not everyone can run an their own email server.
Having a domain and email address is as easy as: Buy the domain, log into the domain account, create an email address, done.
At that moment, you have an email address with a web UI to which you can log in as easy as to any other email provider.
But I do also understand the demographics of this site and why some people here would find that unpalatable.
the only control you have if you go the "own mail server" route is the control on your tears when you see that your mails are rejected by every other mail server in existence because you made it in some random blacklist
And if you're using your own domain, you're always able to switch providers by updating your mx records.
But I wouldn't ask my family to do that either, that's just something for tech enthusiasts and people that make their actual living by being reachable through mail (contractors etc)
[edit:] On the other hand, if one wants to run his own mail server:
From the last hn discussions about blacklists, I got the impression that [running your own mail server] is not an issue as long as you correctly navigate the anti-spam mechanisms. It's not obvious, but also not a black art.
I would rather be bothered by server security. Since email is so vital, how do you secure your server against recent vulnerabilities if you are offline, e.g. if you are on a vacation.
Similar argument: "Why do we even have doctors? Anyone can buy a medical textbook."
>You can start by using the mail service of the domain provider.
>From the last hn discussions about blacklists, I got the impression that ~this~ [running your own mail server] is not an issue as long as
I absolutely expect my doctor to be able to register his own domain in the same vein that my doctor expects me to not lick Corona infested door handles right now.
Registering a domain is like taking medicine. We expect everybody to be able to do it.
It's the building of domain management infrastructure, the software that sells domains to the users, that is out of reach for the doctor.
Similarly, I expect a barista to register a domain. It's not magic. If he has made his own Amazon, Netflix and Spotify account then he can make one more.
"provider", "lock-in", "domain", "UI", "mail server", "email service"
They have no idea that what you mention is even possible, let alone how to do it.
And you know because you've probably invested tens to hundreds of hours into figuring out these things.
Non-technical people still understand accounts: bank accounts, email accounts, netflix accounts, etc.
Those among the technical illiterate, who absolutely have no idea, have gotten their mail account with the help of somebody. Chances are that they are not stupid and understand the concept of accounts by now. If not, they can get a domain account with equal help.
The key concept is ownership. Whoever rents a property understands that he can be evicted. And most people who have bought a house also know that at first the bank owns it and that they could be evicted if they don't come up with their down payments. In other words: almost everybody understands that he can lose something if he doesn't own it.
So it is not a great leap to understand ownership of email addresses. Calling it difficult just allows people to safe face when in fact they just couldn't be bothered.
And non technical lawmakers are able to write effective laws?
I set up email with fastmail but I don't use it much. I assume people will look on them as some sort of vanity address.
I probably should migrate my most important logins to my domain email, though.
No.
> or confusing
Occasionally, with customer service phone reps. It's a good filter to identify people who are too low IQ to trust in general, so it's a great signal
I've pondered buying a domain that's not my name just to make it look like it's a normal email service, so it wouldn't look pretentious. But now it seems to me that a better solution would be to migrate all to Fastmail or Mailbox.org and have an alias ready for that use.
These horror stories of banned Google accounts destroy trust. They have lost my company's cloud business for that reason and I'm sure we're not the only ones.
Also, Google's sprawling empire is already in the crosshairs of regulators. Destroying people's livelihoods by applying draconian bans across personal and professional domains doesn't help.
That's a violation of that "assume stupidity instead of malice for as long as possible" rule.