Stop Uploading Your Data to Google

https://ignorethecode.net/blog/2025/06/11/stop_uploading_your_data_to_google/

27 12 1 year ago

zahlman• 1 year ago

Do not use the email address they provide. Use your own domain name

Not a ton of people are already set up for this. I don't feel like I would know how to; I'm a programmer, not an IT guy. And what do you do when the DNS decides you don't deserve a domain name any more?

Also: another great way to deal with cloud storage and syncing to devices etc. is to just not have all those other devices that you'd want to sync to, or be willing to bring them to your main computer physically for syncing. And back up to something in the same physical space. Been working great for me for decades.

al_borland• 1 year ago

And what do you do when the DNS decides you don't deserve a domain name any more?

This may be my problem in the future. I bought a domain, set it up on Proton, and started moving my email there, slowly but surely. My mistake, it was a .io domain. Now the future of that TLD is uncertain. Maybe it will be fine, but if not, I don’t want to continue tying more to it, so I’ve been divesting.

I went looking for a decent .com and they are of course hard to come by. Several seem like they were bought 20 years ago, parked, and forgotten about… but who knows, they could be running a mail server and nothing more.

My dad has been running his own for about 20 years. Over the years he’s run into various issues. Mail not being delivered, black listed IPs he had to get cleared up, several host migrations. It’s hardly been set it and forget it. At least he has the option to take it with him when a host goes bad, but I wouldn’t expect the average user to go through all of that. Very few people treat email as a hobby.

nubinetwork2• 1 year ago

Follow up video https://youtu.be/eAGBhgNqtWE

parliament322• 1 year ago

As long as your email is on your own domain, is it really worth the effort? Do a Google Takeout on a regular basis and handle if if the (improbable) event occurs. The likelihood of Google purging your data is basically zero.. we have, what, a half dozen confirmed events over the last decade?

arthurcolle• 1 year ago

Just set up forwarding to another email provider

I was able to get a full dump of 9+ years of emails last month after setting this up

Zero thinking. If I need to switch later I can set that up on my time

parliament322• 1 year ago

IMO it's less about having an archive; more about being able to receive mail at that address. After all, email address is the root of your identity for basically everything on the web -- what's the plan if every account you have is @gmail.com and Google banishes you? Running it through your own domain means you just re-point it at a different provider and keep trucking.

QuiEgo• 1 year ago

Like the idea, but instead of google takeout, I just have Mail.app on my Mac download my whole email history, and then do Time Machine backups of my Mac to my NAS.

If I ever get locked out of my Google account, I’ll flip my domain to a new provider, and be back up in 15 minutes.

gbraad2• 1 year ago

I mostly use private services that I host with Tailscale; nextcloud, jellyfin, ...

gbraad2• 1 year ago

... but hate having to do my own email again. Prefer a hosted service for this.

h4kunamata• 1 year ago

I went De-Google years ago with GrapheneOS and I am never coming back.

I still access YouTube coz TV sucks and there is no better service out there, YouTube Music is by far the best service, thanks to YouTube you won't get access to that content elsewhere.

Other than those 2 specific use case:

* CloudFlare: Custom domain is cheap * E-mail: Proton emails with custom domains, if you change your mind tomorrow, bring your domain with you. * DNS: Pi-Hole + Unbound recursive DNS: Avoid any public DNS, force 13 root nameservers instead * Search Engine: Google as we knew is gone, Perplexity AI has been an awesome tool. It not just works "fine" but gives me every single source it used to answer me so I can cross check it. Google Gemini refuses to give you the sources it used and ChatGPT is dogshit * Social Media: I still have social media coz otherwise, groups and hobbies gets pretty difficult without them. I no longer user their apps tho but mobile web. I cannot fully shutdown Google, Meta, Microsoft from collecting my data, but I can make them have an useless broken profile about me.

For years now, I don't know what ADs mean, and the peace of mind that my data is safer than never before.

ChrisArchitect• 1 year ago

I need your help. This channel is set for deletion [video]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44244507

Stop Uploading Your Data to Google

Related Stories