Ok, so I came here because this looks to be a place, and a very active one at that, where a lot of people who will understand the process of registering domains are to be found.
I'm looking to set myself up with an email for life, that is to say I understand I need to buy myself a domain name, and then select an email provider and link the two up. If I then have to change email provider I can keep my address, because it is my own domain, when doing so.
I would really appreciate answers to a list of questions I've got below, but particularly about what the right procedure is for getting a domain name and not inadvertently locking one's self out of it, whilst also not making it reliant on some half-forgotten webmail email address somewhere which one would cease to actually use when one has the domain email all working. I'm really confused about this "keys to the castle problem". When one has an email account the email account is the centre of one's online life, every webshop, forum or other internet service one has an account with ends up linked to your email. And specifically linked to the ongoing address of the email, rather than to the content of historic messages, anyone who gets one's email address at a future time could use password-reset in all manner of places to then take control of online accounts. I appreciate the privacy gains in having one's own domain for email and the ability to easily switch providers for email, whenever a provider does something you don't like, without losing your address. But what I'm really after, more than just privacy, is control, a kind of individual sovereignty over one's online presence, making sure it is I, not some webmail provider, who has ownership of my email address.
If one registers a domain name and then uses something@my_new_domain.com for their email address, then if there are any problems with the domain, or when it comes time to renew one's registration of it, then the email which controls your domain gets locked out too?? On the other hand if you register your domain to a webmail account (gmail, yahoo, proton, hotmail, outlook, zoho, gmx...) then whilst one thinks one has control of one's domain, the reality would be (????) that control of everything actually resides with that barely-used email address?? I'm not sure whether registering two domains with two different registrars and then having a separate, again different provider, email for the email account one will use with either domain can be a solution to this? Expiry dates for each domain would probably be different, and the loop of dependency would be circular across two providers, rather than linearly dependent on a forgotten webmail or self-dependent within the same provider. But then if someone hacked either domain registration or either email address and they recognised what they'd got hold of, they'd be able to steal both web domains and both emails from you???
I know a lot of discussion on this community is about high value domain names and profiting from their purchase and sale, and I know full well that the domains I'd be looking for are not likely to be valuable (obscure long phrases, and a plain and boring .com TLD). But here looked like the best place for advice. Thank you
Here are my questions:
1. I might be best to get the domain registered from a registrar in my own country (UK), if all else fails in an emergency then that means I could contact them by post easily? Does anyone know good ones that are easy for someone who has never done this before to work with. Am I making a "really big" decision when picking which registrar to use, or am I only making a decision worth as much as the amount of money I pay them, and if I end up regretting my choice of registrar then taking the domain elsewhere would be easy and lose me nothing more than the initial size of payment I'd made?
2. I think I'd want ten years straight upfront payment for the domain? Are there any reasons this would be inadvisable? And do all registrars let you pick as much as 10 years upfront, or will many only let you register for a year or two at a time?
3. I think I'd want two domains, to reflect the way I run my life with two email accounts. I have one account for stuff that is "really me", personal correspondence, some official correspondence... and another which I use for online shopping, signing up to forums and getting newsletters from technical societies and social and political campaign groups . The latter isn't a "secure" (bleeping google would have worked out they are the same person within just a few logins a decade ago and I never even took steps to hide that fact from them) amount of separation from my personal life, but it is separate from my personal email. I guess I'd want a different domain name for each, as the way I operate my emails nothing would immediately tell anyone I was in correspondence with that I had the other email too... a campaign newsletter can't suddenly start spamming my personal email address, nor can an online shop, even for a shop where I've literally told them my address and phone number for delivery. Would I be best registering these with two different registrars? If one registrar collapsed I'd only have one email account in chaos at a time? Two different email addresses with the same custom domain doesn't really separate as much as two gmail addresses, from the perspective of people you communicate with, does it?
4. I think I need something called privacy/identity protection on the domains, to ensure a whois query doesn't have to contain my home address? Can anyone tell me more about this, I understand it is provided by default on a .co.uk domain, but I think it is a .com I want.
5. I think .com is my best choice? Other domains can have weird requirements suddenly added to them (.some_country's_code sometimes gets changed to be only for people and organisations based in that country), or look unusual enough (.pizza or .london) that signups of the email to online forums/shopping/... might not accept them as real email addresses? For using an email, .com is likely the most "normal" sounding? And if one has registered a .com then the general perception is that a .com is the "real thing" and anyone who has a .something_else is just copying it?? If one wants to register some domain name as a .something_else then the general rule is that one should also get hold of the .com?? But the opposite doesn't apply? Someone registering a .com has no need to register all the other possible TLD versions (with the exception of corporations worried about public relations who want to make sure they are in control of our_corporate_name.sucks) there are just too many non .com TLDs?
6. (please ignore 6 if this question is outside the scope of these forums) Once I have domain names most of the big email providers, and smaller ones, can let me connect accounts to the domain? I do that within the web interface of whichever email provider I sign up with? This applies to both paid and free email providers, so long as I have paid for the domain?
7. Do I need something like a GPG key as the highest level of "this is really me" verification to keep control of my domains? With the exception of quantum computers becoming reliable and routinely used then public key cryptography is very trustworthy, so it is a wise thing to use as the ultimate "test of identity"? Can you register something like a GPG signature with a domain registrar and say "if you get an instructions that aren't signed like this, ignore them, it is an imposter, not me". The good thing about having something like a GPG signature as the heart of the "keys to the castle" problem is that it is something you can fully control locally, rather than rely on a service for.
8. Websites don't tend to discriminate against custom domains when signing up for services??? I know that for non-custom domains users of providers who are privacy focused like protonmail sometimes get discriminated against when websites want people who sign up for online accounts to be using gmail, yahoo or microsoft. But with a custom domain, so long as the domain has a normal seeming ending, particularly a .com, I'd be alright??
9. So long as a domain name isn't in strong demand you pay much the same for it regardless of length, or is longer cheaper because there are more long addresses possible? I was thinking that making a domain like email@long_name_copied_from_the_bit_of_my_email_address_as_it_is_now.com might be good? The long bit would be 15 or 25 characters given what my addresses before the @gmail part in my two present addresses are. As my email addresses are not the sort of names that are common or commercially exciting I'd guess the prices for these would be the lowest price the registrar could offer given my selection of top level domain.
10. Are there any pitfalls I need to be aware of when registering a domain?
11. How does one communicate with a domain registrar so you aren't in a situation where you've lost your domain but your only means of contact is your domain email address? Or is this kind of circular situation actually quite common with domain registering, as to do otherwise would mean your whole "stack" would be dependent on some little gmail or yahoo account that you rarely ever used?
12. (please ignore 12 if this question is outside the scope of these forums) Is there anything convenient about a non-custom-domain email account itself (ignore things like calendar and other webmail provider services outside of email itself) that I might have gotten used to and would miss once degoogled? For any such things anyone can think of, are there workarounds to get similar capabilities once using a custom domain name and a different email provider?
13. Once you've registered a domain name, do you truly own it (atleast for the rented period)? Is it simple to move this domain name to a different domain registrar if the one you're with does anything you don't like or tries to massively hike prices at renewal time? I have heard some domain registrar companies are more like hosting companies, and you get a website, but you don't really get a domain of your own, you get custom domain but it is actually owned by the hosting company? How do you recognise and avoid this sort of you-don't-keep-the-domain-if-you-move registrar service?
14. It would seem like the domain name is absolutely the "keys to your castle", someone who stole it would not necessarily (?) be able to see historic emails which had been sent to your domain email (because in reality emails sent to your domain email get passed on to your email provider for storage on the provider's servers?) but could capture all future inbound emails and have them go to an email provider of their own? So it ends up with a situation where I'm trying to understand how you can actually secure your online life without everything tying back to some minor and half-forgotten (once you've used the domain named email for long enough) freemail email address which is the thing truly in control of your domain name? Because if you try to put your domain named email in control of your domain name, then if anything goes wrong with your domain name your email gets knocked out too, with no way to recover it?
15.Is it true that with whois privacy services you'd have to keep paying for the service to keep your private info off the whois even if you were to give up on having the domain? Or does whois information stop existing, and therefore cease to need any protection, as soon as you cease to renew a domain?
Thank you, advice on any of my questions would be really appreciate, but particularly on the "keys to the castle" concept of circular dependencies and their dangers or advantages, that is the thing I've been able to find least clarity on when searching.
I'm looking to set myself up with an email for life, that is to say I understand I need to buy myself a domain name, and then select an email provider and link the two up. If I then have to change email provider I can keep my address, because it is my own domain, when doing so.
I would really appreciate answers to a list of questions I've got below, but particularly about what the right procedure is for getting a domain name and not inadvertently locking one's self out of it, whilst also not making it reliant on some half-forgotten webmail email address somewhere which one would cease to actually use when one has the domain email all working. I'm really confused about this "keys to the castle problem". When one has an email account the email account is the centre of one's online life, every webshop, forum or other internet service one has an account with ends up linked to your email. And specifically linked to the ongoing address of the email, rather than to the content of historic messages, anyone who gets one's email address at a future time could use password-reset in all manner of places to then take control of online accounts. I appreciate the privacy gains in having one's own domain for email and the ability to easily switch providers for email, whenever a provider does something you don't like, without losing your address. But what I'm really after, more than just privacy, is control, a kind of individual sovereignty over one's online presence, making sure it is I, not some webmail provider, who has ownership of my email address.
If one registers a domain name and then uses something@my_new_domain.com for their email address, then if there are any problems with the domain, or when it comes time to renew one's registration of it, then the email which controls your domain gets locked out too?? On the other hand if you register your domain to a webmail account (gmail, yahoo, proton, hotmail, outlook, zoho, gmx...) then whilst one thinks one has control of one's domain, the reality would be (????) that control of everything actually resides with that barely-used email address?? I'm not sure whether registering two domains with two different registrars and then having a separate, again different provider, email for the email account one will use with either domain can be a solution to this? Expiry dates for each domain would probably be different, and the loop of dependency would be circular across two providers, rather than linearly dependent on a forgotten webmail or self-dependent within the same provider. But then if someone hacked either domain registration or either email address and they recognised what they'd got hold of, they'd be able to steal both web domains and both emails from you???
I know a lot of discussion on this community is about high value domain names and profiting from their purchase and sale, and I know full well that the domains I'd be looking for are not likely to be valuable (obscure long phrases, and a plain and boring .com TLD). But here looked like the best place for advice. Thank you
Here are my questions:
1. I might be best to get the domain registered from a registrar in my own country (UK), if all else fails in an emergency then that means I could contact them by post easily? Does anyone know good ones that are easy for someone who has never done this before to work with. Am I making a "really big" decision when picking which registrar to use, or am I only making a decision worth as much as the amount of money I pay them, and if I end up regretting my choice of registrar then taking the domain elsewhere would be easy and lose me nothing more than the initial size of payment I'd made?
2. I think I'd want ten years straight upfront payment for the domain? Are there any reasons this would be inadvisable? And do all registrars let you pick as much as 10 years upfront, or will many only let you register for a year or two at a time?
3. I think I'd want two domains, to reflect the way I run my life with two email accounts. I have one account for stuff that is "really me", personal correspondence, some official correspondence... and another which I use for online shopping, signing up to forums and getting newsletters from technical societies and social and political campaign groups . The latter isn't a "secure" (bleeping google would have worked out they are the same person within just a few logins a decade ago and I never even took steps to hide that fact from them) amount of separation from my personal life, but it is separate from my personal email. I guess I'd want a different domain name for each, as the way I operate my emails nothing would immediately tell anyone I was in correspondence with that I had the other email too... a campaign newsletter can't suddenly start spamming my personal email address, nor can an online shop, even for a shop where I've literally told them my address and phone number for delivery. Would I be best registering these with two different registrars? If one registrar collapsed I'd only have one email account in chaos at a time? Two different email addresses with the same custom domain doesn't really separate as much as two gmail addresses, from the perspective of people you communicate with, does it?
4. I think I need something called privacy/identity protection on the domains, to ensure a whois query doesn't have to contain my home address? Can anyone tell me more about this, I understand it is provided by default on a .co.uk domain, but I think it is a .com I want.
5. I think .com is my best choice? Other domains can have weird requirements suddenly added to them (.some_country's_code sometimes gets changed to be only for people and organisations based in that country), or look unusual enough (.pizza or .london) that signups of the email to online forums/shopping/... might not accept them as real email addresses? For using an email, .com is likely the most "normal" sounding? And if one has registered a .com then the general perception is that a .com is the "real thing" and anyone who has a .something_else is just copying it?? If one wants to register some domain name as a .something_else then the general rule is that one should also get hold of the .com?? But the opposite doesn't apply? Someone registering a .com has no need to register all the other possible TLD versions (with the exception of corporations worried about public relations who want to make sure they are in control of our_corporate_name.sucks) there are just too many non .com TLDs?
6. (please ignore 6 if this question is outside the scope of these forums) Once I have domain names most of the big email providers, and smaller ones, can let me connect accounts to the domain? I do that within the web interface of whichever email provider I sign up with? This applies to both paid and free email providers, so long as I have paid for the domain?
7. Do I need something like a GPG key as the highest level of "this is really me" verification to keep control of my domains? With the exception of quantum computers becoming reliable and routinely used then public key cryptography is very trustworthy, so it is a wise thing to use as the ultimate "test of identity"? Can you register something like a GPG signature with a domain registrar and say "if you get an instructions that aren't signed like this, ignore them, it is an imposter, not me". The good thing about having something like a GPG signature as the heart of the "keys to the castle" problem is that it is something you can fully control locally, rather than rely on a service for.
8. Websites don't tend to discriminate against custom domains when signing up for services??? I know that for non-custom domains users of providers who are privacy focused like protonmail sometimes get discriminated against when websites want people who sign up for online accounts to be using gmail, yahoo or microsoft. But with a custom domain, so long as the domain has a normal seeming ending, particularly a .com, I'd be alright??
9. So long as a domain name isn't in strong demand you pay much the same for it regardless of length, or is longer cheaper because there are more long addresses possible? I was thinking that making a domain like email@long_name_copied_from_the_bit_of_my_email_address_as_it_is_now.com might be good? The long bit would be 15 or 25 characters given what my addresses before the @gmail part in my two present addresses are. As my email addresses are not the sort of names that are common or commercially exciting I'd guess the prices for these would be the lowest price the registrar could offer given my selection of top level domain.
10. Are there any pitfalls I need to be aware of when registering a domain?
11. How does one communicate with a domain registrar so you aren't in a situation where you've lost your domain but your only means of contact is your domain email address? Or is this kind of circular situation actually quite common with domain registering, as to do otherwise would mean your whole "stack" would be dependent on some little gmail or yahoo account that you rarely ever used?
12. (please ignore 12 if this question is outside the scope of these forums) Is there anything convenient about a non-custom-domain email account itself (ignore things like calendar and other webmail provider services outside of email itself) that I might have gotten used to and would miss once degoogled? For any such things anyone can think of, are there workarounds to get similar capabilities once using a custom domain name and a different email provider?
13. Once you've registered a domain name, do you truly own it (atleast for the rented period)? Is it simple to move this domain name to a different domain registrar if the one you're with does anything you don't like or tries to massively hike prices at renewal time? I have heard some domain registrar companies are more like hosting companies, and you get a website, but you don't really get a domain of your own, you get custom domain but it is actually owned by the hosting company? How do you recognise and avoid this sort of you-don't-keep-the-domain-if-you-move registrar service?
14. It would seem like the domain name is absolutely the "keys to your castle", someone who stole it would not necessarily (?) be able to see historic emails which had been sent to your domain email (because in reality emails sent to your domain email get passed on to your email provider for storage on the provider's servers?) but could capture all future inbound emails and have them go to an email provider of their own? So it ends up with a situation where I'm trying to understand how you can actually secure your online life without everything tying back to some minor and half-forgotten (once you've used the domain named email for long enough) freemail email address which is the thing truly in control of your domain name? Because if you try to put your domain named email in control of your domain name, then if anything goes wrong with your domain name your email gets knocked out too, with no way to recover it?
15.Is it true that with whois privacy services you'd have to keep paying for the service to keep your private info off the whois even if you were to give up on having the domain? Or does whois information stop existing, and therefore cease to need any protection, as soon as you cease to renew a domain?
Thank you, advice on any of my questions would be really appreciate, but particularly on the "keys to the castle" concept of circular dependencies and their dangers or advantages, that is the thing I've been able to find least clarity on when searching.
