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Email Comments, Questions and Miscellaneous Share your opinion of the email service you're using. Post general email questions and discussions that don't fit elsewhere. |
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1 Apr 2020, 09:21 PM | #1 |
Master of the @
Join Date: Feb 2017
Location: USA
Posts: 1,749
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COVID-19 Continuity Plan?
Just like many of us who had to suddenly switch to working remotely I suspect many of our email providers have had to scramble to keep the lights on. The current emergency is one reason why I believe most of us need to consider reliability of our email service as the second most important criteria when choosing one. To me security is #1. Reliability means the service is big enough to be highly resistant to things like natural disasters and power outages (multiple server farms around the world), ever-increasing attacks by criminals, ordinary software and hardware failures (redundancy), and now pandemics. I noticed that Gandi has published a COVID-19 continuity plan: https://news.gandi.net/en/2020/03/co...ntinuity-plan/. Here's Google: https://www.blog.google/inside-googl...amid-covid-19/. Here's Fastmail: https://fastmail.blog/2020/03/24/covid-19-fastmail/. I would be very worried using one of the small providers with maybe one or two proprietors as my main email service in a time like this.
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2 Apr 2020, 02:30 PM | #2 |
The "e" in e-mail
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Macao
Posts: 2,161
Representative of:
tls-mail.com |
+1 to Eliminate zero reply.
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4 Aug 2021, 09:22 PM | #3 |
= Permanently banned =
Join Date: Aug 2021
Posts: 1
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I totally agree that we should consider the reliability of our email as an important criterion for security. Now, when people store all important information in electronic form, the first thing to think about is the security of their accounts, passwords, etc. But there is another problem - the situation with the covid. People still don’t take coronavirus as a serious decease that spreads all around the world. Not only people, but government too! You may have heard the recent story of a disgraced politician Derek Fildebrandt having a lunch at a restaurant with some other politicians during covid-19 (if not, here is a link: https://globalnews.ca/news/7960375/f...taurant-story/). By this I want to say that many people will have to work remotely for many more years, so this is a really serious topic for discussion.
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4 Aug 2021, 10:03 PM | #4 |
Master of the @
Join Date: Feb 2017
Location: USA
Posts: 1,749
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Obviously, one can backup email from a small provider and have a plan in place to move to another service--in other words, create your own continuity plan. For example, I utilize a small email service for some domain email but I send and receive via my Gmail account so I have complete copies of all emails in two places, and because I control the domain via a third provider I can switch the DNS records quickly if needed in order to use a different email provider. Email at your own domain is often touted by many as an important factor in reliability, but I often wonder if the domain registrar could potentially be a weak link. If the domain registrar goes down how easy is it to move to another registrar and how long will it take?
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5 Aug 2021, 06:28 PM | #5 | |
Essential Contributor
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: Scotland
Posts: 492
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Quote:
Surely if a particular registrar goes out of business the national agency will know that and have some process in place for managing it. |
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5 Aug 2021, 09:36 PM | #6 | |
Master of the @
Join Date: Feb 2017
Location: USA
Posts: 1,749
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Quote:
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5 Aug 2021, 10:29 PM | #7 |
Master of the @
Join Date: Feb 2017
Location: USA
Posts: 1,749
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Here's one article about problems with an Indian registrar that apparently took years to resolve. That would be too long for me to lose access to my email! https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/...n_domain_woes/
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7 Aug 2021, 05:56 PM | #8 | |
Essential Contributor
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: Scotland
Posts: 492
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Quote:
IANA - see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intern...bers_Authority - are the global authority for controlling assignment of IP address ranges and control of domains. They delegate control to regional authorities who in turn delegate to national ones. While, for the UK (or more accurately, for domains ending in ".uk") Nominet are the company who hold the registrations, it does make sense that all the day-to-day hassle of dealing with individuals is farmed-out to the registrar companies, not least because in many cases they are also hosting people's servers/sites so will in any case be billing you for stuff other than domain registration. DNS-wise, Nominet's info for a domain just defines the name servers where all the detailed information about your domain can be found. Yoiu can see that if you do a "whois" query for a domain, eg at: https://www.nominet.uk/whois/ Perhaps you should read nominet's faqs at: https://www.nominet.uk/domain-support/ |
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7 Aug 2021, 07:22 PM | #9 |
Master of the @
Join Date: Feb 2017
Location: USA
Posts: 1,749
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Thanks. If the article above is reasonably accurate it still seems it could be a long and awkward process moving your domain with the possibility of it expiring during the process if the registrar went belly up. Even with routine domain moves I have experienced days of delays at times, which can cause email problems. We have continuos discussions comparing email providers, but we should probably think a bit more about our domain registrars.
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