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Old 19 Feb 2017, 08:18 AM   #256
jchevali
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Originally Posted by jchevali View Post
$FM's goal is probably to make sure they can offer an advanced technological product, along a profitable user base, so that they can appeal to a big organization, along the lines, probably, of a NASDAQ-listed CRM provider, and be bought up. And I might venture if it wasn't bought in about five years, $FM's value as a business would decline and it might become outdated and unwanted (perhaps like uReach).
uReach wave-good-bye anniversary:

https://www.genband.com/media-center...ransformation-

FastMail soon hopefully.

You won't be missed.
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Old 19 Feb 2017, 08:22 AM   #257
ChinaLamb
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Originally Posted by jchevali View Post
uReach wave-good-bye anniversary:

https://www.genband.com/media-center...ransformation-

FastMail soon hopefully.

You won't be missed.
Fastmail was already bought out once and they bought it back. ..you think they are going to go there again?
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Old 19 Feb 2017, 11:27 AM   #258
thisisnotgood
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Stay AWAY...

is all I can say. This company Fastmail clearly plays games with what they charge for what pretty much is FREE from everyone else..Google, AOL, Mail.com, Microsoft ect. The one big difference, is that even these huge internet giants give a darn about their reputations. Who wants to be at the mercy of their email provider? They clearly have demonstrated that they will do what they want. I truly feel for the folks here that have PAID for a membership for LIFE, and now they want to charge them because it's better for their financial gain. And as some here have pointed out, it's truly a breach of contract which by the way is illegal.

Nothing, but nothing is worse than the feeling of being manipulated and controlled because a company or a person has the one up on you! They OWN your email address, and although you use it they take it away if they don't get the money from you they think it's worth. Sure, you can have your own domain name but the vast majority of Fastmail users either don't know that or don't want the hassle or extra expense if they don't have a website that uses the domain.

It baffles me that anybody in their right mind would continue to use their services. I had a "guest" account when they first started back in 1998. I didn't pay for it of course and it only allocated a measly 15 MB. But I still used it on certain things. Now they are taking it away. What people don't understand that it's the principal of this behavior that is so despised not the $15.00 loss of paying a lifetime membership or in my case not paying for anything at all!
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Old 19 Feb 2017, 05:33 PM   #259
walesrob
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is all I can say. This company Fastmail clearly plays games with what they charge for what pretty much is FREE from everyone else..Google, AOL, Mail.com, Microsoft ect. The one big difference, is that even these huge internet giants give a darn about their reputations. Who wants to be at the mercy of their email provider? They clearly have demonstrated that they will do what they want. I truly feel for the folks here that have PAID for a membership for LIFE, and now they want to charge them because it's better for their financial gain. And as some here have pointed out, it's truly a breach of contract which by the way is illegal.

Nothing, but nothing is worse than the feeling of being manipulated and controlled because a company or a person has the one up on you! They OWN your email address, and although you use it they take it away if they don't get the money from you they think it's worth. Sure, you can have your own domain name but the vast majority of Fastmail users either don't know that or don't want the hassle or extra expense if they don't have a website that uses the domain.

It baffles me that anybody in their right mind would continue to use their services. I had a "guest" account when they first started back in 1998. I didn't pay for it of course and it only allocated a measly 15 MB. But I still used it on certain things. Now they are taking it away. What people don't understand that it's the principal of this behavior that is so despised not the $15.00 loss of paying a lifetime membership or in my case not paying for anything at all!
Congratulations on the funniest post of this thread.

Almost reminds me of a line from Reservoir Dogs - "Are you gonna bark all day little doggy, or you gonna bite?".
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Old 19 Feb 2017, 09:57 PM   #260
ChinaLamb
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Originally Posted by thisisnotgood View Post
This company Fastmail clearly plays games with what they charge for what pretty much is FREE from everyone else..Google, AOL, Mail.com, Microsoft ect.
Nothing in life is free. You make much more money for Google, Microsoft, etc. By using their service. They make money scanning your email, learning your likes and dislikes, learning how long you look at different ads, then aggregating that info with data they buy about you from facebook, Twitter, etc. This all gets combined to sell you products and advertising, and to target you in many ways. Using those other services, you are paying them with personalized information about your private emails.

Choose whose game you want to play.
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Old 19 Feb 2017, 10:41 PM   #261
Gsptlsnz
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Originally Posted by ChinaLamb View Post
Nothing in life is free. You make much more money for Google, Microsoft, etc. By using their service. They make money scanning your email, learning your likes and dislikes, learning how long you look at different ads, then aggregating that info with data they buy about you from facebook, Twitter, etc. This all gets combined to sell you products and advertising, and to target you in many ways. Using those other services, you are paying them with personalized information about your private emails.

Choose whose game you want to play.
Spot on! At least FM gives you some privacy. I'm still surprised that so many people are willing to use G-mail considering the company's reputation for spying.

Rule of life: if something is "free", that means "you" are the product that's being sold. TV sells viewers to advertisers, that's why show ratings are so important. The more viewers a show has, the higher the cost of the commercials.

If an e-mail service is "free" it means your info is being watched.
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Old 20 Feb 2017, 01:46 AM   #262
Bamb0
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Originally Posted by thisisnotgood
It baffles me that anybody in their right mind would continue to use their services.
Well they are the BEST email provider out there..... (Or they were) -- Im not sure what happend...
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Old 20 Feb 2017, 01:55 AM   #263
TenFour
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Rule of life: if something is "free", that means "you" are the product that's being sold. TV sells viewers to advertisers, that's why show ratings are so important. The more viewers a show has, the higher the cost of the commercials.
This is true, but you do have a lot of personal control over how you interact with advertising. For example, use an ad blocker and that eliminates part of the problem. I have found the mobile versions don't work so well, but I just don't read most of the ads I see. And, I find it strange that despite all the money and technical know-how being thrown at targeting me with advertising probably 95% of the ads I do see are irrelevant and nothing I am interested in. Seems to be a huge waste of money to me, but if I get free services in return I am not going to argue with it.
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Old 20 Feb 2017, 02:25 AM   #264
thisisnotgood
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Spot on! At least FM gives you some privacy. I'm still surprised that so many people are willing to use G-mail considering the company's reputation for spying.
.
See, I don't care if Google looks at my email. There is really nothing to see, I have 99% boring work emails on it. Maybe somebody can use it to help them fall asleep. The only issue would be if your wife works there, and she gets access and finds that email to the young hottie that you just asked out Kidding aside, as long as your are a good law abiding citizen I don't see what the big deal is.

And of course I use ad blocker to the full extent possible. I have not seen ads in years on any of my email providers. So I say, let them "sell" my boring stuff to others for profit. I never realized I was so valuable.
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Old 21 Feb 2017, 12:29 PM   #265
somefmfan
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Originally Posted by Gsptlsnz View Post
If an e-mail service is "free" it means your info is being watched.
While I appreciate the sentiment I'm holding out hope for a decent 'private' replacement for my Fastmail account.

I know of three free candidates of which I've signed up for two and will use one if I don't find something better.

I hope it's ok to leave this link. My search for a free, 'private', 'secure' replacement ended here:

https://www.privacytools.io/

cheers
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Old 22 Feb 2017, 06:52 AM   #266
TenFour
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While I appreciate the sentiment I'm holding out hope for a decent 'private' replacement for my Fastmail account.
I understand the desire and need for privacy, but I have zero confidence in the privacy of email communications in terms of state-level surveillance, even if you are using encrypted communications. There are too many possible back doors and points of vulnerability. How confident are you that providers offering encryption aren't secretly working with a government agency? As someone keeps saying, don't send anything via email that you wouldn't want published in the local newspaper. However, on the other side of the coin, my email communications are of no interest to anyone in the state--my main concern being criminals looking to make a buck off of stealing my banking info., etc. I'm pretty sure that most mainstream email providers, including FM, do their best to secure email against those possibilities, but if you are planning a terrorist attack use another means of communication.
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Old 23 Feb 2017, 11:29 PM   #267
minimalist
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It is kind of sad to say goodbye to fastmail, especially with a small investment ending up with a thousand dollar headache of changing email addresses.

But there is a good ending: finally doing the right thing and getting a personal domain. And doing that is much easier today than in 2001, and I also know that I don't want mylastname.com which is what I would have purchased then. So instead of mylastname@fastmail.fm, I will get the preferable shortasiwant@mychoiceofdomain.mychoiceoftld.

After getting a personal domain, you need to be able to get email. As far as I know there are (at least) three options:

1) Run your own mail server. This is another thousand dollar headache, no thanks for a user that only needs basic email services and expects no privacy in email communication. Using one of the free big providers as a backend is fine for me.

2) Use an email provider that allows personal domains. There are a few that will do this for free(currently at least Zoho and Yandex), and probably always will be. You might have to change providers from time to time to keep free(beyond domain purchase) service. This also requires a little bit of playing with your domain records.

3) Have email forwarded automatically to another email address. This is easy to do when purchasing a domain from Google Domains for example. Any free backend for another email address to forward to will be fine here, and there will always be plenty of those.

A .com, .net, .biz, .org, or .info domain costs $12/year with free private registration and email forwarding for 100 users to any email address. So with 3 friends the new cost will be $3/year with a (hopefully more chance this time) lifetime email address.
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Old 24 Feb 2017, 10:47 AM   #268
jhollington
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So with 3 friends the new cost will be $3/year with a (hopefully more chance this time) lifetime email address.
Assuming that you remain friends for life...

In all seriousness, though, it's not as far-fetched as you might think, and it doesn't even have to involve a big falling out. I'm still maintaining a domain name that I registered for my now defunct business 20 years ago, and I let a few friends have email addresses on it at the time. Some of them are still using those addresses to this day, even though I've all but completely lost touch with most of them.

However, I've been a nice enough guy to keep the domain name active and was fortunate enough to have been able to get it in on Google Apps for Domains back when there was a free version available, so it's not costing a huge amount of money, but if I was relying on cost-sharing to pay for it, I'm not sure how many of my old friends would still be interested in keeping it active.
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Old 24 Feb 2017, 01:44 PM   #269
sleepycat
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I assumed most FM users had their own domains. Guess I was wrong.
Wonder if there is a breakdown of stats. Would be interesting to see.

Domain name is much cheaper now. No longer $35 a year.
So, it makes a lot of sense to have your own. That way, if any provider really jacks up the price, you can just move to a more competitive one.

I had a lot of friends used to pay $10/month for dial-up line for many years just so to maintain that email address until they could be reasonably sure they no longer needed that address. For 5 years, that's like $600 down the drain just so not to lose emails.
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Old 25 Feb 2017, 12:31 PM   #270
minimalist
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... For 5 years, that's like $600 down the drain just so not to lose emails.
$600 is certainly a lot less than I consider the value of not having to change my email address. I was thinking $1000, which means I've paid $67/year for my member fastmail account, essentially all of it not going to fastmail. By no stretch of the imagination have I paid only $15 for 15 years of service.

I certainly think people on the new plans and pricing thread ought to be reconsidering their probability structure on how long they'll get grandfathered pricing.
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