When I started with Internet email, it was through BBSs that got connected to the early pre-web 'net. Compuserve, Navarone Junction, Eagles Nest. Then I got access at OSU in the 80s, and that was way mo bettah. Then, little known to most, I partnered up with a small computer service shop in Grove City called TMCI.net. (Total Media Communications Inc). Yes, that might be why POINT is an acronym, but I digress.
Anyway, TMCI was pretty much a few retired old farts from AT&T that went around and serviced the LAN and phone system of local Grove City area businesses, and they did a good job and had fun. People started wanting web sites and email in the mid-90s, however, and that was pretty new stuff to them (and in general), so they found me. We worked together to manage a web server running Windows NT 3.5 and a mail server running something I can't remember (but it worked in Windows).
For probably fifteen years, TMCI hosted sempf.net and pointweb.net for email, calendaring, and file storage. Then again, I could just mount C$ on either server from home and take care of whatever was needed. Those were simpler times. At some point Fred, the owner of TMCI, decided he was gonna retire, so I took my talents to Miami, I mean Microsoft. Hosted everything on the new very-pre-azure Microsoft "cloud" with Exchange IMAP and the earliest of early OneDrive and the whole deal.
Then Microsoft screwed me over. They made a change internally, told no one, and some of us (about 250 from what I could tell from the forum posts) got our Exchange instances corrupted, accounts confused (it was people with two MS accounts that were at the core of this, myself included) and generally received a solid borking. I even lost some Xbox achievements because of the account confusion.
Microsoft's response:
So I picked up the shattered remains of my system, and went to the new Google Workspace because "Don't be evil" amirite? It was awesome, and it still is awesome. I had an active Microsoft account that did Microsoft things, and an active Google account that did googly things, and it worked out really well for another fifteen years or so. Does my math add up? Well, I'm sure someone will complain if it doesn't.
The end of vendor lock-in! I was Free! If I didn't like the MS product in a space, I'd use Google, and vice versa! I thought Windows Mobile was neat, so I switched to it because I could. When it died, I went to Android because I could. Already active at Google, which runs Android. Everything is peaches and roses.
This Friday, two pieces of news dropped. First, Microsoft announced that they were dropping the ability to offline install Windows. This means you must call home before installing Windows 11, as they have removed the well-known workaround that folks used to make kiosk versions of Windows. It also means that Microsoft thinks that even if you paid them for the operating system, you are beholden to them forever.
The second was news that Google is taking Android development out of the open source community. They commit to publishing the source code on each release, but who actually believes that? More importantly, why would they change something that works, and works well? Do they need more control? The Magic 8 ball says:
That puts you, me, and anyone else that is interested in retaining some control over their privacy in a really interesting place. On the one hand, we're in this deep, who cares, right? Everyone already has all of my private information anyway, so fuck it, I may as well live a little, right? Well, yeah, maybe so. But I have a couple of problems with this.
You see I already have evidence that books I have published have been used to train AI. Honestly, I don't mind as much about that as I do about some things. For instance, I do mind if MS and Google train their AI on my clients' vulnerability reports. Or email between the client and I about those reports. Or the network traffic I generated that led to those reports. So I do, really, have a problem with the clear endgame here, which is "all your datum are belong to us."
At this point you might think I need to get a refitting for my tinfoil hat, and maybe I do, but it's pretty clear that both Google and Microsoft are actually planning on screwing us over. Add to this the fact that the long dalliance between big tech and the federal government has become an active, visible, unabashed affair, sex tapes and all, then we really start having a problem. The federal government recently sent thugs after a girl at Dartsmouth, stuffed her in an unmarked car, and took her to Louisiana for a nice long stay because she penned an op-ed for the student newspaper. How long before they come for you because of an unpublished blog post you have in your drafts folder that is critical of the government?
OK, folding up the tinfoil hat for a moment. Let's just say you don't want to participate in The Big Three anymore. What are your options? Well, there are any myriad of hosting companies out there that will handle POP or IMAP mail, lots of storage facilities that will rent you space. I have been looking at Proton, a Swiss company with some pretty strict encryption at play. They have small biz plans that would meet POINT's needs. Also, Michael Lucas wrote "Run Your Own Mail Server" which is another option.. That would put me back in the TMCI days, but would it be worth it?
I'm not exactly sure what would meet my very specific (though by themselves not unusual) needs. I'd love to get some feedback from the community - are you dealing with this? Is there anyone struggling with this at the enterprise level? At the personal level this is hard enough, but even with just a five-user base, the services people are used to are a constraint! Also, the less we want The Big Three to do for us, the more we have to do for ourselves, and time is the only limited resource.
All of that said, it could be that for some of us, the days of avoiding vendor lock-in is over. We are down to standing up our own servers like we did in the 90s - at least until the network itself is reserved for the use of the Microsofts and Googles of the world. But that's real tin foil hat stuff, while the privacy issues are literally happening right now. It is time for me, at least, to make a call.