Privacy Focused Email and Domain Registration

07 - Mail and Domains

GMail

For the past decade, I’ve been using the same GMail account.

Tracking down every account I have created with it is going to suck.

Or will it?

I started using a vanity domain for more recent accounts about two years ago, so that’s about 20%, right..?

Quick switch of the forwarding address to a different email provider should take care of all accounts that are tied to it, but what about the rest?

I DuckDuckGo’d a way to export an entire GMail account, and found their official guide

After looking at the file contents, I put together this one-liner:

This should show all the “From” addresses that sent to [email protected].

All it takes now is logging into all of those services and updating my account with a vanity email address.

There were a few accounts that I decided against migrating, simply because I didn’t use them anymore.

I’ll probably keep the GMail app on my phone until the “Last account activity” is > 30 days.

Domains

I’ve purchased and transferred domains to many of the domain providers out there, but ended up sticking with Google the longest.

Their administration portal is the best I’ve used, and they don’t charge extra for email aliasing/forwarding. I do wish they supported “catch-all” email configurations without Google Apps, but I’ll take what I can get.

I own more than 10 domains and the closest expiration is > 6 months out. As far as privacy goes, GMail and Chrome top the “tin foil warning” list. Domains is definitely in bottom half.

For the sake of this experiment, I’m going to leave all of my domains with Google. I just can’t justify the hassle that comes switching domain providers for all of my web applications.

That was it! Of the 13 Google services I used, I was able to switch all but 3 [Keyboard, Maps, and Domains].

Debrief coming soon :)