Email
Email is harder to explain, so I'm going to describe how I use my email.
I have like 10 email addresses over 4 email services.
- I use Gmail for things I absolutely cannot allow to disappear (banking, government).
- I use my school's in-house email system for anything academic (including things that discount you for having a .edu).
- I use cock.li less frequently for general throw-away stuff and disassociative identities.
- I use my lolcow.email server for a lot of stuff, but it's just me hosting it so I tend not to put anything too sensitive on it and keep the email off the server itself by routinely deleting everything I receive.
In general I treat lolclow.email and cock.li as things that are reliable, but can potentially vanish. I use .edu sparingly and Gmail for shit that needs 100% uptime.
To make my life easier, however, I don't check these email clients on their websites. I instead use
Thunderbird and
Blue Mail for managing my mail. Using IMAP/POP, I can keep all my mail in one place and manage the different sending addresses. Google can also use IMAP/POP to import and send-as, but I don't want a majority of my email content on Google.
Thunderbird (Desktop Email Client)
Blue Mail (Mobile Email Client)
Gmail (Mobile & Web client)
Pros
- Does the job perfectly.
- Integrates all your email addresses flawlessly into the Gmail system, which
- Works on all computers as a web client, as well as importing your mail into your mobile devices.
- Allows you to send and receive from all your email addresses exactly as the standalone email clients do.
Cons
Special mentions to Proton Mail, which a lot of people use but I do not.
Proton Mail (Web client)
Pros
- Claims to be encrypted by your password, which they do not keep.
Cons
- No way to know for sure if it's actually encrypted.
- But, because of their encryption, they have no IMAP/POP and do not integrate into any other mail client. You have to use their shit to send/receive/even check mail.
- Requires identifying information or bitcoin to make an account to stop spam.