I have this bad feeling daily that for whatever reason I loose access to my gmail. Don’t think of anything shady but simply I just loose it. There is a very small chance to it but still. You can read the stories that people uploaded their family photos to google drive and the algorithm marks their kids photos CP and they loose their account. Or maybe your email is used to spam or anything similar. There is no way to talk to google support, it is an endless loop of help pages. I just can’t live with this. I know billions of people do, but I cannot. My email address is registered to hundreds of websites including government and banking sites. You could literally destroy me financially or other ways by just gaining login to my gmail. Google could cause me HUGE problems by locking me out. I decided to start transitioning to an email with my own domain. I have the doimain, I have the email client setup. So what do you do with your existing stuff? Most websites dont even let you change the email. I have to take appointment in government offices to change my email. It seems like a giant task.
Have anyone took this leap?
Never had gmail, I used my ancient hotmail to signup for a google account.
did it years ago. created several new email addresses for different purposes with one main new personal one. I set up a forwarding to that main address from Google while I transitioned online accounts to the new email addresses. now I use Google only for YouTube and my phone but the Google mailbox is pretty much defunct, occasionally I get an email but that is still being forwarded to my new main one
make periodic backups of your gmail account content on your own computer(s) and setup auto responder on gmail to use a new email address; easy peasy
In addition to the other advice given in this thread, set an autoreply in your gmail that telld you that you have switched email addresses and include your new address. This way, people know of your new email address if someone still manages to mail you on your old email address.
I switched to Fastmail a few months ago and love it.
My tip is: Start simple.
- If you have any other Domains forwarded to Gmail forward them to Fastmail instead.
- Forward Gmail to Fastmail (i.e. add as an account including importing old mails). This won’t get you off Google yet, but at least a backup and you can practically stop using Gmail.
- For any new registration, use Fastmail (or any of its random emails etc.)
- Slowly transition your old accounts.
