Hacker News Reader

Comment by sho | Hacker News Reader

This saved me during my big scare about a year ago when I suddenly found myself locked out of an important account with no way to get back in (phone number was old and inaccessible). The password was fine, they just didn't believe it was me for some reason.

A few months later it suddenly worked again, and I seized that opportunity to move permanently away from gmail. I was lucky. I do not want my access to my online identity to be governed by luck, however, so really advise anyone who will listen to make the move before this kind of sob story happens to them.

"It won't happen to me" - I thought that too, and no doubt so did the OP. Won't it? How much will it cost you if you're wrong?

It now costs me $50/yr to know it won't happen to me and I'm more than happy to pay a fair price for a good product, like I do for everything else.

View on HN

How does paying 50 bucks a year give you that peace of mind? What kind of recovery procedures do providers like fastmail have?

Real, intelligent people for customer support (well, the last time I needed any, which was years ago). You are paying for the service and it's not cheap although also not expensive compared to normal things you also need like Internet service (using US prices). GMail is normally "free," you are the product, and customer support and caring about customers is simply not in Google's DNA. Which we can see in too many of their paid services.

The real protection is to get your own domain which Fastmail of course supports, so you can point it at a different email provider if worst comes to worst, like ajross's plausible proposition that:

"[...] I'd put the odds of Fastmail failing entirely as a business rather higher that those of any single user having an unresolvable 2FA glitch with a gmail account. In the world of real data and not anecdata, Big Tech is incredibly reliable."

> I'd put the odds of Fastmail failing entirely as a business rather higher that those of any single user having an unresolvable 2FA glitch with a gmail account

Well that's funny, because I see a desperate post by a gmail user with an unresolvable 2FA glitch (except by screaming for help on tech-oriented forums hoping someone will notice) basically every week, and yet somehow Fastmail isn't out of business yet. And who knows how many "normies" without an HN/Twitter megaphone just silently lose access, weep a bit and give up?

I have no doubt that Google won't actually lose my email data, but if I can't access it and have no recourse then there's no difference in practise.

What product are you using now?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com