Email addresses are portable to any webmail, mail server or other email infrastructure provider if you have your own domain and then forward to the service of your choice. This way you can use Gmail if you like or maintain your own full email stack, or anything in between, while still addressing your mail to something you control.
but do you really control your domain? if somebody hacks into your registrar or forges your signature or something and transfers it to themselves, they would get your email, and it might be very difficult for you to get it back. Or maybe I am being too paranoid about this and it's less likely that your domain gets taken from you compared to your mail provider deciding to terminate you.
You can also do something like using fastmail, where you don't control your domain, but being a paying customer you do have somebody to call if there are issues
I find the attack itself technically plausible, but where's the motivation? Why would someone go to the effort just to get some random personal domain? Sounds a little far-fetched, and I've never heard it happening to a personal domain of a non-VIP. Meanwhile, we know that Gmail accounts get terminated regularly, and appealing is hard-to-impossible.
Cryptocurrency mostly (based on public disclosures), but sometimes other digital assets like twitter handles or game currency. Sometimes domain names themselves are the asset.
As is now well known, mobile numbers are often also hijacked to subvert weak 2fa.
This is something I have tried to weigh the risks of when it comes to use a Gmail account vs my own domain. What is more likely to happen: Google permanently locks me out out of my Gmail account or I forget to renew my domain or have it somehow stolen from me?
> What is more likely to happen: Google permanently locks me out out of my Gmail account or I forget to renew my domain or have it somehow stolen from me?
Then use TLDs where that can't happen.
If you forget to renew a .de domain, for example, you get a letter, and have 2 weeks to restore it, or end it - per default, it gets held in TRANSFER mode, for 50€/month.
Also, you can always get the domain back, if you can prove ownership.
This is true if you're starting from nothing. However, Gmail is over a decade old at this point and is the primary email for millions of users. And something like custom domain is beyond the technical skills of average users.
However, Gmail is over a decade old at this point and is the primary email for millions of users.
Switching is annoying, but not impossible. You just forward the old address to the new and progressively replace it on any accounts you might have. I still have access to my Gmail account, it just hasn't received a non-spam email in years.
Oddly enough, it was really easy to set up a custom domain on Gmail: I did it. However, Google stopped offering that service for free, which will stop most ordinary people from using it...
