Gmail is one of the most popular email platforms used by millions of professionals and individuals. However, in recent years, concerns about data privacy and cyber-security have been mounting. With Google’s prying eyes constantly monitoring your inbox, it’s time to take back control of your privacy. In this article, we will guide you on how to migrate out of Gmail and take back your privacy today!
Step 1: Choose an alternative email service.
Before migrating out of Gmail, you need to choose a reliable alternative email service that puts your privacy first. There are several options including Protonmail, Tutanota, and FastMail among others. Each platform offers end-to-end encryption, meaning that your emails and attachments are protected from hackers and prying eyes.
Step 2: Export your Gmail data.
Once you have chosen a new email service, it’s time to export your Gmail data to ensure that you have access to your stored emails and contacts. To export your data, log in to your Gmail account, navigate to Settings, and click on the ‘Accounts and Import’ tab. Select ‘Export data’ and choose the files you want to export.
Step 3: Notify your contacts.
It’s important to notify all your contacts about your new email address. You don’t want to miss out on important emails just because they were sent to your old email address. Send an email to all your contacts informing them of your new email address and request them to update their address book.
Step 4: Set up forwarding from Gmail.
To ensure you don’t miss out on any emails sent to your old Gmail address, you can set up email forwarding. To do this, log in to your Gmail account, navigate to Settings, and select the ‘Forwarding and POP/IMAP’ tab. Enter your new email address where it says ‘Forward a copy of incoming mail to’ and click save changes.
Step 5: Delete your Gmail account.
Now that you have exported your data and migrated to a new email service, you can delete your Gmail account to ensure that Google does not continue to monitor your inbox. To delete your account, log in to your Gmail account, navigate to Settings, and select the ‘Forwarding and POP/IMAP’ tab. Click on ‘Delete your account or services’ and follow the prompts to complete the process.
In conclusion, migrating out of Gmail is a simple process that can significantly improve your data privacy and cyber-security. By choosing a reliable alternative email service, exporting your Gmail data, notifying your contacts, setting up forwarding, and deleting your Gmail account, you can take back control of your online privacy. Say goodbye to Google’s prying eyes and take the first step towards securing your emails today!
Gmail, just like all Google products, is terrible for your privacy. It’s also just about the best webmail service you can find. So most of us are willing to put up with some data mining for the sake of spam-free email that’s easy to read and send. But as tech companies like Facebook have repeatedly fumbled the privacy football, users are growing uncomfortable with the privacy they’ve surrendered, all in exchange for social media and communication platforms.
While Google says they stopped scanning user emails in 2017, they still permit third-party apps to scan your emails when approved by the user. If you’re starting to think about migrating out of Gmail, here’s the easiest way to separate from the Google mothership and reclaim your privacy with the least amount of pain.
1. Establish a New Private Email Address
Make sure you select an email service that respects your privacy. There’s a very good chance you’ll need to pay for that respect. Nearly all free webmail services we know of use the data from your email for advertising purposes. The only free accounts we’ve seen that don’t siphon data are the trial-sized accounts for more private services, but those won’t be robust enough to serve as a primary email account. We recommend you check out ProtonMail for safe email outside the territory of the Five Eyes.
2. Forward Specific Mail from Your Old Address (with a Proxy, Optionally)
If directly sharing your email with Google bothers you, set up an anonymous account on another service and use it like a proxy. As long as you trust the service to erase the records of your communications once forwarded, you’ll have nothing to fear.
Click on the cog in the upper-right of your Gmail homepage and select “Settings” from the drop-down.
Click “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” at the top of the page.
In the first section, “Forwarding”, click the radio button next to “Forward a copy of incoming mail to” and enter your forwarding address.
In the second drop-down under “Forwarding,” choose “Delete Gmail’s copy.”
Click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page to commit to your changes.
3. Change Email Addresses for Web Accounts
This is the most tedious step: You’ll want to change your login email for any accounts that use your Gmail. If you don’t, you’ll need to keep the Gmail account active perpetually for the sake of forgotten password emails. Of course, you can do that. An empty inbox doesn’t give Google any meaningful data about your life, but a trickle of newsletters and outdated autocomplete addresses will likely make sure your email account receives at least some mail for as long as its active.
The longer you’ve used the account, the more difficult it will be to shut off all incoming emails. Even if you unsubscribe from everything with perfect diligence, email list suppliers won’t just stop selling your address. The interest-based lists you end up on can be a rich source of information for Google about events it might not have been able to capture otherwise.
4. Migrate Third-Party Google Account Sign-ins
If you’ve used Google to sign in to other websites with your Google account (sometimes called an OAuth login), you’ll need to migrate those accounts to an email-address-based account before you can shutter your Google account for good. Depending on the service, you might find that such migration is impossible, and you instead need to establish a new account.
This is not by accident: the primary purpose of the “Sign in with Google” system is to harvest information about you on third-party sites. But a close second is to increase your reliance on Google services and make it even harder to migrate from it. So when you catch yourself saying, “Eh, forget it, I’ll just leave the account open,” make sure you’re considering who wants you to make that decision.
5. Set an Auto-Responder (Optional)
If you’re making your change of address public, then a Contacts-only autoresponder can be helpful. To set up an autoresponder that only replies to your existing Gmail contacts, follow the instructions below:
Click on the settings cog on your Gmail inbox page, then choose “Settings” from the drop-down menu.
Scroll to the bottom of the page to the vacation responder section and write your vacation responder.
Tick the box next to “Only send a response to people in my Contacts” to avoid updating spammers.
Set the expiration date for an appropriate period, such as a year.
6. Close Your Google Account
We strongly recommend you download a copy of your personal data before deleting your Google Account. This operation will make your data permanently inaccessible.
When you’re ready to delete your Google account, follow these steps.
Log in to your Google account.
Click “Data & personalization” on the left pane.
Navigate to the “Download, delete, or make a plan for your data” panel. Click “Delete a service or your account.”
Under “Delete your Google Account,” click “Delete your account.”
Conclusion
The procedure to leave Gmail behind and migrate to another more private and secure email service is easy. What makes it hard is the effort you need to put in to get it done, especially if you owned the Gmail account for a long time and used it for all your other accounts logins. Nevertheless, taking the effort to get out of Google’s clutches is still worth it in the long term.
Alexander Fox is a tech and science writer based in Philadelphia, PA with one cat, three Macs and more USB cables than he could ever use.
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