Currently going my load of online accounts I have that very much use the same Gmail address and while I am working on deleting accounts and changing some accounts to use a compartmentalised email address. I am very unsure whether to eventually delete my Gmail account and only stick with mailbox.org. I do not plan to delete my Google account as I have quite a bit of use for the play store, YouTube and a few other things. Even though, I try to rely on as little google as possible.
The advantage of keeping my Gmail account is I can use it for job applications as many online job applications require setting up accounts or sending emails to and from as Mozilla relay does not support sending emails. But the advantage of sticking with just mailbox.org is that everything from mail, to contacts, calendar and tasks are in 1 place and much more organised and compartmented. However, mailbox.org is not quite there yet as a fully drop-in replacement of Gmail. Such as issues where the service fails the Email Spoof Test, recurring tasks are not supported and just get flattened to 1 time task and contacts not supporting groups. I know people say email is not secure and use Signal (Remove Mailbox.org - #3 by jonah), but job recruiters and most people in work environments communicate via email as it’s a universal standard. I would not want mailbox.org to go full proton as there are already alternatives to some of their services such as Bitwarden and Dashane instead of proton pass for example and again, eggs in basket issue.
What are peoples thoughts and setup? Do others stick with just 1 email inbox and compartmentalise things using an aliasing service, or use a few other email inbox accounts? Maybe an old one they created years ago for accounts they can’t compartmentalise into? I do not count situations of having work email, as that’s outside one’s jurisdiction.
Switch while keeping the Gmail account around, at least for the short term. There is no need to delete your Gmail account right now only to realise in the future that its linked to some important account that you only need once a year or similar.
While switching from Gmail to Proton, I set up a forwarding rule to send all email from Gmail to a DuckDuckGo private email address. This has been useful for a few reasons:
I can see all my emails in one place–no need to stay signed in to Gmail.
Because you can see what address an email was sent to, you can see what accounts you have that are bound to your old email address and switch them over peicemeal at your own pace.
I can continue reading the emails that are sent to my Gmail account without Google knowing what emails I have opened and read.
If you ever need to respond to a Gmail email (for your job search or whatever), you can just sign in to Gmail and do it because the account is still there.
I don’t get much Gmail email anymore, but it was a slow transition. For me personally I have found it useful to be able to still keep an eye on that mailbox without actually being signed in.
I do plan to keep my Gmail account short term. But I’m more talking long term. What about when I have moved all my online accounts to mailbox.org or aliasing service?
Personally I would advice to keep any email account alive for ever really. There will be many things attached to it you dont know. And if you ever want to send a request to delete your data it is an easy way to proof it is you, otherwise you may be forced to share your ID or something more sensitive.
Just forward the emails, empty the account of all data and that is it.
Really depends on what timespan you call short term. I migrated my accounts to proton about 6 years ago, but kept my google email and wrote down when I had to use it (for whatever purpose). About half a year ago I also deleted my gmail, since I didn’t have to use it at all for 2 years straight (a timeframe I set myself to make sure I don’t lose access to something/can’t prove my identity to get things deleted).
I was only writing about GMail since I actually kept the Google Account and only deleted most of googles services in the account settings. Now the account email is an SL alias instead of the previously linked gmail email.
Thank you. But if you change to an alias email one that can send and receive email, then it would allow for deleting gmail. For instance, any accounts one wants to delete, use a dedicated alias and thus still possible to delete as one would have changed email. But I guess It’s if one deletes gmail, then something comes in.
That’s for a whole google account. If one still uses say play store or such, then it is still considered activity across the whole google account, even if one doesn’t use Gmail.
Unless if one never uses Gmail. but still uses play store or drive. then would the gmail still be deleted?