Comment by TranquilMarmot
19 hours ago
I own a domain that I use as my primary email address, but it's a "premium" domain that costs quite a bit to lease every year. To me the main concern here is that my payment fails, I don't notice, the domain goes up for sale and somebody grabs it. Then they have access to everything.
So, I use my personal domain for all mail except anything that's "vital" like government websites, banking, paying rent, etc. for which I use my email provider's domain. And of course I'm registered with my domain registrar with a different email domain.
If you can afford it, renew the domain for 10 years into the future (which means having it paid for till 2035, for example). Every year, renew the domain for one more year so that it’s always paid for 10 years into the future. If payment fails or you’re busy with something else, you’d still have several years of no worrying (some caveats and risks may still apply depending on the TLD and registrar).
That's a good idea, I might see if I can do it. It was registered with Google Domains but got transferred over to Squarespace, idk if they offer long-term renewals.
I don't think long term renewals exist for premium domains.
You probably shouldn't use a premium domain unless you really need one. It's just a money grab by registrars and registries.
Hi @TranquilMarmot, first off, i think the recommendation from @AnonC on their long term approach to registering a domain name is absolutely brilliant! Do that!
Another recommendation you should consider is to find a domain that ends in one of the common top-level domains - like .COM, .NET, or .ORG - because for using with *vital government services* you would not believe how many good natured civil servants (or for that manner even customer service folks in private/commercial companies too!) have no idea that email addresses can end in something other than .com, .net, or .org...and if you try to give them an address that, say, ends in like .FR, or .CC, or .ME, etc...They will try to place a ".com" at the end of it! My experience shows that folks in the U.S. know far less about other TLDs...and are more likely to commit this error, but folks outside of U.S. are perfectly cool with all manner of different TLS. I have had a somesurname.CC domain name as the mailbox for all my family members for more than a decade...and they are all trained to be LOUD and explicit when they communicate to government workers and customer service folks. So, i should have just gotten an easier TLD, but ah well. Live and learn! :-)
EDIT: Forgot to add that choossing the more common .COM, .NET, or .ORG TLDs for a domain name *tends* to be cheaper than many premium domains names. Each registrar wil of course vary, but mostly these tend to be reasonably priced.
> but folks outside of U.S. are perfectly cool with all manner of different TLS.
Users in other countries are very likely to be more familiar with both their own local domain, and have probably also experienced websites from neighbouring countries, while your average American has never even seen a website with a .us domain (never even seen it used myself), and are a lot less likely to have needed to go to a .ca or .mx website.
That said, I'd expect to get a similar reaction from people in other countries if you said your email was firstname.lastname@mydomain.christmas, or whatever other funny top level domain.
That hasn't been my experience in US. Login.gov, Social Security, Global Entry, etc. all work perfectly fine with Proton (@pm.me) domains. At least, so far.
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