For me – and probably most other people – my email address is the most valuable digital asset I have. It is the main ID that is used to log into other services, making it the key to my digital life.
Lately, I’ve been on a journey to clean up and de-risk my digital life, and owning my email address is a big part of that.
You see, if your email address ends in @gmail.com, you don’t actually own that address – Google does. And there have been all too many stories of people losing access to their Gmail accounts because of system glitches, policy violations both real and imagined and other unfortunate events. Even if this only happens to a fraction of a percent of people, the stakes are simply too high.
So I am slowly moving all my accounts to one of my own domains. If anything happens to my email provider, I can simply move to another one while keeping my email address. As an added bonus, this is a great opportunity to delete accounts that I’m no longer using. Quite a few of those have accumulated in my 25+ years of internet usage.
If you want a step-by-step guide on how to own your email, there’s a great one written by Matthew Sanabria.