A Multiple-Flags Strategy for Your Email Accounts

Most folks are content using one email account, but I am not one of them.

From my informal polling of friends and personal contacts, Gmail is the email service that almost everyone uses and for every type of correspondence. From mail, chat, and now voice features, Google has a majority of our needs met with their service.

Since Gmail is easy to use and it’s free, what is so wrong with that using it?

Why Not Gmail

Though widely used, Google’s service has ran into a number of issues. Here are the top 2 concerns:

Privacy
Major University Dumps Gmail Over Security Concerns
Google to be reviewed following Buzz privacy concerns
Gmail Adverts Become Even More Targeted Using Your Priority Inbox

Support
Judge Shuts Down Innocent User’s Gmail Account Over a Bank’s Screw-up!

If you do not have privacy concerns, like your inbox being scanned to serve targeted advertisement, then Gmail is good enough. If you are not bothered with the prospect of waking up one morning and seeing that you’ve lost years of emails because access to your Gmail account has been revoked, then Gmail should be fine.

However, if you have plans to supplement your income using the web or if you want comfort in knowing that emails between you and your doctor are kept private, then continue reading for an approach that leverages jurisdictional limits for handling and protecting your correspondence.

An Easy Simple 1-2 Approach

1. For financial emails, consider registering for an offshore email service such as NeoMailbox (Swiss hosted) or HushMail (Canada Hosted) .
2. For general correspondence, consider registering for a service that focuses soley on providing a stable environment like FastMail (U.S. Hosted)

With the above method, you are segregating your correspondence based on a sensitivity or exposure basis. You may want to ensure that emails related to bank and investment accounts secure and private. However, the secure service providers focus on privacy and not so much on ease of use.

For general correspondence between friends or service notifications like Facebook Birthday alerts, chose a user-friendly interface like FastMail.fm. You have the option of having FastMail import your Gmail emails and create redundency in the event one service is down.

An Advanced 1-2-3-4 Approach

If you really want to get fancy, then consider adding a non-US Top Level Domain (TLD) to your approach.

For example, I have a .CO TLD pointed to my Swiss hosted email account. Currently the .CO TLD is managed by a US registrar. Upon expiration, I plan to transfer the .CO domain to a Cananda hosted registrar.

Today, emails sent to my .CO (a Columbian extenion) which is held by a US Registrar is directed to a Swiss hosted email provider. In the future, the .CO (Columbian extension) will be held by a Canadian registrar and directed to a Swiss hosted email provider.

If the next banker mistakenly sends confidential emails to my account, then this approach will provide 3 jurisdictional hurdles before my business is affected.

For example, consider a situation where financial documents intended for a recipient at the engineering company www.hau.com was accidentally sent to my account at www.hau.co, where I plan to sell photographs.

If my email accounts were hosted on the Gmail servers, then one court order effectively cuts access to my emails and shuts down my business. With the multiple jurisdiction approach, however, the absent-minded banker would need to first appeal to the court system in Canada where the TLD is registered and then to the courts in Switzerland. The extra burden of appealing in multiple jurisdictions may dissuade such actions.

The complexity is in setting this up the first time. After it’s up and running, the process is transparent. You only need to visit your new service provider instead of Gmail.

Here’s my current setup:

1. .CO (Columbian exension, US Registrar)
2. Swiss Hosted Email Provider
3. .COM (US extension, Canadian Registrar)
4. US Hosted Email Provider for general correspondence

Options 1 & 2 are for financial and investment related emails while options 3 & 4 are for general correspondence. I’ve tested several email service providers and strategies over the years and I’ve found that this is best balance between strong privacy and accessibility for everday usage.

The above 1-2-3-4 approach handles my first 700+ email accounts with ease.

I still use Gmail on a regular basis so I am not advocating shutting down a useful service. I would, however, insist that you build a level of redundancy and security into your correspondence in light of the aforementioned issues.

I also have a few one-off email accounts for travel purposes, but that’s a post for another time.

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