This is definitely the best protection. If the provider drops you, you move your domain to another provider. But, as far as I know, while almost all email providers will host your personal domain, none that I know of will do it on the free plans. But your email is your identity. You should be willing to pay for it, especially if you host it on a provider that otherwise won’t make any money on you.

There are a couple of downsides. If you forget, or are unable, to renew your domain, you lose it and your emails. Make sure another family member or friend can pay the renewal for you if, for some reason, you cannot.

While your own domain makes it far less likely that your email will be canceled (because you can move it), abuse of your domain can result in your losing your domain name and your email, especially before it has earned a reputation.

Which brings up another IMPORTANT point. If you use your own domain name, then you must set up your DNS records to protect your domain from spoofers and spammers so it doesn’t get blacklisted or, worse, doesn’t cause cancellation of your domain name. Scammers and spammers WILL try to send email using your domain name. You need to tell email clients to toss these rogue emails and give them the means to determine spoofing and unauthorized use. Read this: https://www.valimail.com/blog/dmarc-dkim-spf-explained/

Also, be aware that SpamAssassin considers .com, .net, and .org TLDs to be far safer than .world, .online, .blog, and most others. Using one of these newer TLDs results in a higher spam score, and your email is more likely to end up in the spam folder if it reaches the magic score of 5. A new age TLD can add as much as 1 point to the spam calculation depending on the email provider receiving your email.

So your own domain name is safer but costs money and requires more work.

https://hear-me.social/ is one possibility. It has the added benefit of a 12,000-character posting size as well, especially nice if the 500-character limit at .social was frustrating.

I deleted what I wrote before. If it federated, ignore it.

Your browser is trying to find startpage.com on your local machine instead of the Internet.

While on the VPN, open a command window and ping startpage.com. Does it return localhost or the real IP address? If it returns the real IP address, then the problem is related to the browser. Try another browser to see if it’s Vivaldi-related.

If it returns localhost then maybe it’s a setting in protonVPN?

This is strange. Just try to find clues.

Deleted by author

I’d ask for a refund.

I read the post and understood the problem. Then I read Dan’s reply. And he’s fixing it. In fact, he’s fixing it in the exact way the blog post says it should be fixed, “… but those filters should be manually triggered and always removable.”

Here’s Dan’s reply:

“… I hear the community: you want text-only posts. We are going to build this as an opt-in feature. If you want microblogging, turn it on. If you prefer the classic media-only experience, nothing changes.”

Why was this blog post even written then? Now it’s seeming to be personal.

my-sunshine.video is one with no restrictions and has open registration. Don’t know about others.

Yes, it claims to proxy the traffic, but then you have to connect to the fedibuzz relay server.

It sounded from the post that there was an attempt to directly connect to a Mastodon server through the relay connection, which won’t work.

A relay, as in the Mastodon relay feature? As in Administration->Relays? If so, does mastodonapp.uk have an active relay? It can’t be used to connect to just any Mastodon server. It has to connect to a special relay server.

Not sure whether this is helpful.

Dumb question. Are you sure the “I” after the @ in ItsGloria is an upper case I (eye) and not a lower case l (L)?

I’d really like to kick the idiot who created a font where both are identical.

I just searched for @ ItsGloria @ vivaldi.net on my Mastodon instance and everything appears good. It tells me that you switched your account to Glor.

Have you since resolved the issue then?

Proton Mail, Tuta mail, runbox.com, to name three.

Depends on the application for me. For Mastodon, I want to allow 12K character posts, more than 4 poll question choices, and custom themes. Can’t do it with Docker containers. For Peertube, Mobilizon, and Peertube, I use Docker containers.

The headline is nuts. There’s no hidden universe on the ocean floor. I’ll fix the headline:

“Scientists Found Evidence of Distant Cosmic Events Using a Detector on the Ocean Floor”

Wow! Well done!!

Edward Snowden claims the NSA knows how to do it.

https://www.cis.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/EAS499Honors-IMSICatchersandMobileSecurity-V18F.pdf

It doesn’t mean they are wrong. Anyway, here:

“Based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency (NSA) had already developed a technique in 2004 to locate cell phones even when they were turned off, called “The Find”, mostly used to locate terrorist suspects [36]. This was accomplished through the use of IMSI catchers, which could wirelessly send a command to the phone’s baseband chip to fake any shutdown and stay on [37]. The phone could then be instructed to keep just the microphone on, in order to eavesdrop on conversations, or periodically send location pings. The only hint that the phone was still on was if it continued to feel warm even though it had been shut off, suggesting that the baseband processor was still running. IMSI catchers used by London’s Metropolitan Police are also reportedly able to shut down targeted phones remotely [38].”

https://www.cis.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/EAS499Honors-IMSICatchersandMobileSecurity-V18F.pdf

Seems to depend on what you read: https://godarkbags.com/blogs/news/imsi-catchers-the-hidden-threat-to-your-mobile-privacy-and-how-to-stop-them

Quote:

Can I Be Tracked With My Phone Off?

Yes, even when your phone is turned off, it’s not entirely inactive. The radio system, controlled by a separate subsystem called Baseband, can still transmit signals. This design allows for features like remote device tracking but also means that simply turning off your phone doesn’t protect you from IMSI catchers. Using a Faraday bag completely isolates your device from any external signals, providing robust protection.

The most effective defense against these threats is to block the signals that IMSI catchers rely on. This is where Faraday bags come into play. These specially designed bags create a barrier that prevents radio waves from reaching your device, effectively neutralizing IMSI catchers and other surveillance tools.

They can triangulate from the 8 readings that they did and know my location. They also know it’s T-Mobile and they can subpoena T-Mobile and Google to get the information (the IMSI code will identify the dealer) to identify who bought the phone and what phone account pays for the service.

IOT, your utility company, sensors that report information …