My Name at My Domain

My outlook on this area of life is exemplified by the “Contacts” section on https://julian.foad.me.uk, where my four main contact id's listed there should all line up, all identical except for formatting/protocol: <my name> <at> <my domain>.

Most people today are encouraged to sign up using addresses they don't own, a different one for each different service they use:

This practice is driven hard by commercial megacorp services, for the good old commercial reasons of lock-in and marketing. Unfortunately, and unnecessarily, it is also the common pattern on open/federated services. I call this an anti-pattern.

What's the difference?

The owner of a domain has full control of what goes on there. In the first case, I or my family's administrator have full control over my identities at my domain. In the second case, each service provider has the control over the identities at their domain. Not only do they get to choose everything about how the account operates, data retention, banning it, charging for it, advertising on it. Also they get to choose what identifiers are registered by whom, and so in general people cannot expect to get the same my.whole.name@ prefix on every service. Some people attempt to do so, and accept the compromises when they can't.

What to do about it?

If I had grant money to spend I'd spend a good chunk making open services support bring-your-own-domain.

[1]: (I'm currently looking into Webfinger to fix the Fedi handle which is currently an outlier.)

Feedback:

Donations gratefully accepted