I have recently had a technical dilemma. I have been a user of many Google services over the years. I have several Google Apps for Work domains. I post private videos of my family on Youtube. I have loved Google Voice long before Google owned it. For most of the time I have used their services I have know there have been some questions about what they do with all the data collected. From day one of Gmail you knew they were looking at your mail to give you ad’s. At the time I brushed it off, especially since i didn’t really start using gmail for a few years after it came out. After I did the lingering security questions were still there but because they provide services that really work well I didn’t question anything nor did I really care. The cool aid was great.
The problem I am facing recently is I have read more specifically about what data Google collects and how long they store it. Or rather how they don’t really say how long they store it. There are many discussions on the topic, here, here, here, and many other places. After reading a lot on the topic and talking with a few people I work with more knowledgeable on the subject than I am I decided the great user experience wan’t worth all I was giving them.
If was to move providers I needed first an email provider. 2nd I needed to stop using Google Voice.
Until very recently that was no small feat. I didn’t want to rely on my mobile alone. That is why I ported my mobile number to Google Voice in the first place. Thankfully as good timing would have it the new IOS software offers wifi calling and handoff to computers for calls. This is not nearly a replacement for google voice for me, but it made it easy to move back to one mobile for everything since as long as I had WIFI I know my number would work. With my new iPhone 6 I would be able to solve my Google Voice dependency. Next up of course is the bigger issue, my email hosting. If just picking anyone I would have gone with Office 365 or some other cloud offering. The problem was as I kept talking to people and reading more I have to say I wasn’t too happy with the US governments tactic’s on getting access to people’s accounts. After that statement I know people are going to say if you don’t have anything to hide, why would you worry. Well I don’t have anything to hide, but that’s not the point. I would rather not know my government could relatively easily get access to my stuff with a court order that apparently happens more often than you would like. I don’t think I am being paranoid guy about this. To me it feels more like ignorance is bliss. Since I do know how creepy stuff is apparently now a days I don’t just want to leave Google mail I want to ensure my data is safe where ever i put it.
I thought about my own server. I just don’t want to deal with it. The super secure Swiss email hosting provider was too expensive. I opted for a well known general web hosting provider in Switzerland were data privacy laws are much more strict than in the US.
Next up for me is to goto the T-Moble store and port my number. After that it is lots of mail copying to my new provider.