This might come out as a bit of a rant, but I just wanted to post it here anyway since it’s the only social media I use.
Recently, I’ve been making some steps to improve my privacy. GrapheneOS, Linux on my PC, open source software, moving away from Google stuff. So, next logical step was for me to switch away from Gmail. I went with Tutanota, since they’re based in EU, their mobile app is on F-Droid and doesn’t require Google Play Services. So I made an account, switched a bunch of my private account e-mails from Gmail to Tuta, and was basically done. Two days later, I wake up to a “invalid credentials” message. I checked the option to remember my password on my PC, so I thought it was weird. I checked my phone, and it turns out I was logged out of the app too. I tried changing my password with recovery code, thinking something went wrong (though unlikely since I used a password manager), but I got an error on that one too. So I contacted Tutanota, almost a week ago. No response.
I tried looking on various sites to check if people had a similar issue. I found a few reports on Reddit. The moderator of Tuta says to contact the e-mail address that I sent a message to already, but people complained that they haven’t gotten a response either. I found out that similar reports were happening for a while now, accounts being flagged for seemingly no reason. I found one post from October, 2024, from a frustrated user. He said he was in the same situation, and when he finally got the reply, Tutanota said they can’t do anything. When I found that post, I was really disheartened. I’ve already went back on a bunch of accounts to @gmail.com account, for safety, but there is still a few that I’m not even able to access because they use e-mail 2fa. Some of them being accounts for various government public services.
So this one gave me a pause on my privacy journey. I never encountered problems like this one before. A service blocking my account without any message or warning. No contact from support. Being locked out of my accounts. I’ve lost a lot of enthusiasm to replace a few proprietary services that I have left.
Why don’t you just setup your own email server? Get a domain if you don’t already have one, it’s like $30/year? Then a small cloud server? Like 4 core/ 6GB mem, 100GB SSD for $5/month? Or use a home server? Then use Modaboa (FOSS) to setup a full email server for your domain, including trusted TLS encryption and all the current email security stuff (DKIM, SPF, DMARC). Yes, your email server will very likely be blocked from sending emails for some time, however, it works perfectly for receiving emails. I use it for wildcard emails so that I can just use a different email address for each service/website (i.e. unlimited email addresses) . Then I let google get my emails from my mailserver. If there is ever any problem with google then I can either directly get my mail via webmail or I just use another (free etc) mail provider or even a local thunderbird client to get mails.
This is what I did but I would suggest you shop around. in many cases for first time sign ups you can get the domain for free and you pay a discounted price for the first year. For example I went with a local webhosting service where I got the domain for free, unlimited email account creations, and a decent shared web hosting server for $50 a year. I use the web hosting to host my personal site regardless of the fact I have a dedicated server with OVH. But I mean the free domain and emails + web hosting for $50 a year was a deal I couldn’t turn down.
Btw, backstory to setting up my email server is that I used to use the “free” email box provided with my domain registrar gandi.net . Then they suddenly wanted $5/month per mailbox and I said no and instead set up my own email server. That can happen to your service too, hence be careful that you fully own (including transfer rights etc) your domain.
yes I should have clarified I completely own the domain. the deal I got was essentially a “coupon” thus free for registering the domain that the web hosting service was partnered with. naturally once my first year is up I have to pay for the domain on a regular basis.
Yea, sounds like a good deal, just be careful that the “domain for free” isn’t tied to your web hosting service provider subscription! Will you loose the domain when you cancel the service? If so, then a “free domain” is much worse than one you paid for but that you directly own (via registrar). The whole point of “your own” domain is that you can keep it and the related email addresses regardless of email or web service provider.
Is there a good noob friendly tutorial for all this? Or do people just try, make mistakes, lose all their data, get hacked and finally learn?