I gave up. I own my name as a domain.
So if my name was John Doe, as an example, my domain would be Johndoe.com and my email would be John@Johndoe (dot) com.
My name isn’t John Doe.
Gmail is cool and all, but it’s pretty sweet to have my custom domain name and email.
The domain I really want is just my last name, so I can be firstname@lastname (dot) com.
Unfortunately my last name isn’t uncommon and the last time I checked, the squatters on the domain were asking like $3k usd for it.
All kind of nope on that.
I currently have my full name on GMail and Proton, but I actually had my first name on GMail when it first launched. As in, if my name was Brian (it isn’t (it might be (it isn’t))) I had [email protected]. Sold it for £1000.
Wouldnt you get extra spam for having such a simple name?
Probably more a problem for Americans all being named John Smith
I’m so old I was able to get my kids Gmail with his name.
I have this and the other people with my name give it as their own email address all the time, apparently not understanding that you don’t get the address just for existing.
That’s pretty good, for how bad it is.
I have a pretty old gmail address that’s fmlast@gmail, and several years ago there was a lady with fmlast12@gmail who kept leaving the numbers off. It wasn’t that bad though, and for one or two important things I replied to help.
it happens to me too, though my format is lastname.firstinitial, so I have more potential for confusion as my last name isn’t super uncommon.
people just sign up for stuff with it. sometimes banks even.
Ha ha this happens to me so much. I even had to help a poor dude out because his account (and stuff getting delivered) all was under my email.
On a side note, I got the firstnamelastname@gmail, but Gmail often proposed the firstname.lastname@gmail in autocomplete, with my image and all, so I just “recovered” it. Now I have both when I’m trying to ditch Google 🤷🏼♀️
Gmail addresses with and without a dot are actually identical. Mine has a dot but I also get emails without the dot.
There must be some names that invalidates your claim (I’m just bewildered if it’s true)
Like Abc Def and Ab Cdef style. Or is firs.tnamelastname valid too?
Learned something today then! 👍
Edit: doesn’t work for me
Ugh same. My first name is very common, last name moderately uncommon. I’ve gotten loads of stuff. Various quotes and invoices (vet, mechanic, window installation), invitations to child care groups, family gathering invitations (that one I think was the person writing the email address, not the person with my name).
Most of the time I just immediately unsubscribe or block or whatever and move on, but there’s some (like the child care group) I had to reach out to because that could be potentially dangerous.
Get your own email right, people! It shouldn’t be my responsibility to manage your email. Some of that shit includes your home address too.
I got my gmail as my name like a year ago because I just have an uncommon name (Denvil)
Denvil my man, have a great day!!
My partner has his [email protected]. no letter number €_-+() or whatever.
Stupid part now is that sometimes he gets mail for letter . /_/ - lastname. Only on important stuff he reacts. He still is happy with it.
My name is uncommon enough that I can always pick my name everywhere, and when I can’t it means I forgot I had an account.
Summer 2005. I have the first letters for my name and middle names and then the full last name dot gmail.com. However, nowadays I use my own domain. Since 2008 i got my own domain dot country code but it was for selfhosting. 4 letters dot country code. Only last three years ago i switch to use it for mail as well. I dont host my inbox, just forwards it.
And here I am, with a [email protected] address, running my own mail server.
- People sometimes act like this is pure magic
- Some providers only allow popular mail services on signup (fuck those), so I had to set up a GMail address that just redirects to my actual one
- My last name is really hard to spell, so it probably wasn’t the best idea, since I always struggle communicating that address verbally
The pain of running this still beats having to deal with a free provider out there that either spams my inbox with their own BS or just skims through the data to serve me ads.
I have a few domain names, including firstnamelastname.co.uk. I mostly use it for spam monitoring; everyone gets a different address, so eBay has ebay@, Microsoft has microsoft@, etc. It’s harder for them to link my identities together and if I suddenly start getting fuckloads of spam I know who leaked/sold my address. Fuck you, LinkedIn and LastFM.
I also had my own email server until recently (MailInABox on Proxmox), but I was looking for a cloud storage provider so I ended up signing up for Proton and moving my email there.
QR codes can help
I have @firstnamelastname.tld since last name was taken (unrelated to me).
Typically use [email protected] when giving out my email to keep track of spam so I used [email protected] when buying tickets.
At the check in the person saw my airline@ email and askes: oh do you also work for airline?
I’m using my custom domain email with a hosting service (mailbox.org). Hosting on my own was a pain in the ass and you also have to deal with spam filters not trusting you.
Sadly I didn’t think to try to grab my last name until recently, and it has been owned for quite a while.
Nice! I have [email protected].
Congrats!
What setup did you use? I’m interested in doing this as well. I’ve already self hosted a NAS with vpn access using an RPI4 with PiVPN. It works quite well.
I got
<first_name_initial><middle_name_initial><last_name>@gmail.comin imitation of my university webmail account name. My brother who had the same first name and middle name initials knew this and had adjusted accordingly.However, recently, someone registered this e-mail for school and I kept receiving their school e-mails.
My e-mail account is already roughly two decades old at this point, so I thought I was safe from this kind of problem.
You could also get a private E-Mail address that doesn’t scan all your mails to make money out of it. Google tries to enprison you in it’s ecosystem by “facilitating” logins and so on. If you don’t pay with money, you pay with your data.
Both are great alternatives for only a couple of bucks a month.
Huge vote for mailbox.org. They have calendars, contract lists, online storage, etc. I’ve been able to get rid of Google/gmail almost entirely from my phone.
Also
freeincluded video conferences!I don’t know anything about mailbox.org, but I’m sure it’s way less sketchy than Google. It’s just interesting you would praise their free video conferences after posting “if you don’t pay with money, you pay with data.”
Should have said ‘included’ rather than ‘free’ since it is a paid service
Like the other commenter said, it is included in the price. It is called OpenTalk and is as secure as it gets.
Last year, I saw an article written by a recruiter about how recruiters are sort of biased against you if you use a non-GMail account because it “feels” like you’re on old tech and out of touch and, therefore, will be hard to place and, Void, did it make be so mad.
Gmail and MS also make other providers jump through crazy hoops too to let users create a new email, lest they be flagged as a “spam” provider and blacklisted by the 2 services.
The modern internet sucks.
Purelymail is also an amazing service. 10€ per year for unlimited storage and addresses, and you can add your own domains.
Been using them with a custom domain for about 8 months and love it, no issues at all.
Also tutamail
Can vouch for TutaMail, currently on it as I attempt all the hurdles of serting up a self-hosted mail solution.
I got my Gmail account because someone gave me one of their early adopter invites LOL.
Same way back in the land of 2006.
It is still under my Livejournal name hahahaha.
Yeah, I never got an early adopter invite, and by the time it launched to the public, someone already had my name. Apparently there’s some middle aged programmer who shares my name, and he got an invite.
