Don't Use a gmail.com Address

jjruohonen about 2 hours ago 19 commentsRead Article on crookedtimber.org

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Discussion (19 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

readme•32 minutes ago

I host my own email. I also have a gmail account, that I've had since the beta.

I cannot tell you how many times I have encountered a person that asks for my email and then looked at me confused when it didn't end in gmail, outlook, or something, and then ask me for another email, as if only that would be good enough.

seiferteric•27 minutes ago

I have my own domain and my email ends with a .casa TLD and it not only causes confusion, I have had some websites reject it as invalid.

graemep•8 minutes ago

I think lesser known TLDs are the problem. I have had a .net domain and used the email address (and its self hosted these days, which has been a problem with sending to hotmail) and have never had it rejected or confuse anyone.

ON the other hand I had a website with a ccTLD and one guy kept trying to add .com to it - his own country's ccTLD!

mywacaday•10 minutes ago

I wanted to take a look at Boomi.com but couldn't sign up with gmail, turned on email forwarding for a parked domain to get past it. Stupid behaviour if you are trying to sell a product.

Retr0id•about 1 hour ago

Inferred context: It's the (unverified) email field of a blog comment submission form. gmail.com happens to be the domain that spammers pick most often for their fake email addresses for their spam comments.

jwr•about 1 hour ago

I gave up on reporting spam. Almost all of the spam I get (and I get a lot of it!) comes from Google, Amazon and Microsoft. None of them care much, none of them make reporting easy, and it seems they don't follow up, because the flood of spam never ceases.

They are "too big to fail": few people can afford to just block Google. This is why I am very happy to see people starting to do just that.

bcrl•10 minutes ago

I think the difference between Google's DMARC policy for gmail.com and google.com says it all:

  bcrl@home:~/electronics/vrm/lm5017/test-lm5017-isobuck$ host -t txt _dmarc.gmail.com
  _dmarc.gmail.com descriptive text "v=DMARC1; p=none; sp=quarantine; rua=mailto:mailauth-reports@google.com"

  bcrl@home:~/electronics/vrm/lm5017/test-lm5017-isobuck$ host -t txt _dmarc.google.com
  _dmarc.google.com descriptive text "v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:mailauth-reports@google.com"

UI_at_80x24•about 1 hour ago

Blog is getting too much spam, so they are restricting posts/comments from Gmail.com addresses.

That's ok, I understand the desire. I also recognize that it's a lazy "fix". I have my own domain and prefer that so I can track compromised sites.

In quasi-related conversation though, in the last year I have encountered 2 "necessary" websites (insurance, and medical form) that would only accept: Gmail, yahoo, outlook, etc addresses!

It's frustrating.

jocoda•15 minutes ago

That ship has sailed. A far as most are concerned gmail is email. So that is now the reality. Google has successfully, without any resistance, assimilated email and the web.

I run my own mail and I faithfully avoid chrome as much as I can but the ship is long gone over the horizon.

Sad. But so it goes.

graemep•5 minutes ago

Not true for me. All businesses of any size, and even most small businesses, that email me have their own domain. Individuals use a variety of services, and even one or two non-geeks use their own domains.

Insanity•about 1 hour ago

Given they accept any input that presumably matches a regex it doesn’t matter which one you choose.

But if you are looking for a new email provider and de-Google your life, I’m pretty with ProtonMail and their other offerings. Also moved my 2FA and Password manager to them, alongside their VPN.

zetsurin•29 minutes ago

proton has some issues that may or may not be issues for you

- https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/proton-mail-fbi-stop-co...

- http://thoughtportal.org/2025/02/26/proton-mail-says-its-pol...

these people seem more problem free so far https://mail.tutanota.com/login

temp0826•30 minutes ago

I've been a proton user for a while but have always shied away from their other offerings...feels like too many eggs in one basket to use them for both email and password management (things I consider to be the most critical of all services I use). Vpn as well! Am I being paranoid? It would be nice to not pay for 3 separate services but I have kind of a blockage about it

wavewrangler•10 minutes ago

Why not just add extra verification for Gmail addresses?

altmanaltman•18 minutes ago

"Blog flooded in spam" but it has less than 50 comments on all posts generally? Or is it assuming they are deleting or blocking the supposed flood of spam comments that is unbearable enough to block gmail?

llm_nerd•9 minutes ago

Random little sites that allow and auto-publish user submissions have gotten targeted with spambots for decades. And I mean in the AI era, using an LLM to generate even more capable spambots for every site is super doable.

This silly submission front-paged purely because of the title, and loads of lazy HNers who just upvote based on the title, not realizing this basically has nothing to do with gmail.

encom•25 minutes ago

Quoting a dead comment:

>I wish we didn't have to use email at all.

Email has big problems, but contemplate the kind of lovecraftian horror the great minds of silicon valley would replace it with today. Imagine the worst parts of Facebook, Electron, Discord, Windows 11, CloudFlare and TikTok. Secured by Denuvo and the CIA and brought to you by Dollar Shave Club and the Chinese Communist Party.

You'd wish you had email back.

llm_nerd•about 1 hour ago

Some tiny blog allows comments (which is incredibly weird in 2026). Spambots fill in the email box with fake addresses. Blog lazily just sets up a filter to auto-kill all gmail tagged addresses.

This has nothing to do with Google, Gmail, spam coming from gmail, or using gmail addresses, outside of leaving a comment on this tiny blog. Yet all the other comments seem to presume they do. Are people just upvoting this thinking it says something it doesn't? (That was rhetorical, because of course this nonsense front-paged because of lazy people just voting on a title).

rvz•about 1 hour ago

Can't be preaching to others about "privacy", or disliking Ads and then at the same time be using a gmail.com address.