You Don't Lose Your Data to Hackers. You Lose It to a Recovery Loop.

I used a personal Microsoft email account for years. Nothing strategic — bills, rent, electricity, public services. The boring but essential stuff.

One day I changed my phone and lost my password. I followed the recovery process. Microsoft asked me to confirm via my backup (Microsoft) account. That backup account asked me to confirm via the first one.

A snake eating its own tail.

I tried adding a new recovery address. The system wouldn't accept it. No support that could resolve it.

Result: years of emails and documents, gone for good.

That day I understood something: the threat to your digital business is rarely a hacker. It can only be a recovery procedure you can't complete. A circular dependency built into a system you trusted for years.

The Question Worth Asking Today

If you lost access to your primary email account tomorrow — no password reset, no backup code, no support ticket resolved — what would you lose?

Your client history. Your invoices. Your contracts. Your subscriptions.

For most solopreneurs, the answer is: everything that matters.

Three Levels of Response — Pick Yours

You don't need to rebuild everything at once. The goal is deliberate choice, not paranoia.

Level 1 — The easiest move: if you're based in Europe, switch to a sovereign email provider

If you operate in Europe — or serve European clients — your email provider matters legally, not just operationally. The GDPR requires that client data stays under European jurisdiction. Most mainstream providers don't guarantee that.

Here are reliable options, several with free tiers:

Commercial providers — European-based, privacy-focused

Cooperative and solidarity providers — community-run, non-profit

These are often overlooked but worth knowing. They are run by volunteers and activists, carry no advertising, and commit to never exploiting your data:

More broadly, the CHATONS collective brings together structures offering free, ethical and decentralised online services VMware Blogs across Europe — including email. Members commit not to exploit the data of their users, not to use advertising networks, and to offer regular in-person meetings with their users to reduce the digital divide. Hacker News Find a provider near you at chatons.org.

Level 2 — For the more technically curious: self-host selectively

Email self-hosting is genuinely not worth the trouble for most solopreneurs — deliverability issues, blacklist risks, constant maintenance. Leave email to trusted providers above.

For everything else — your blog, your documentation, your files — self-hosting is viable and worth considering. I cover the technical setup on my wiki for those who want to go that route.

Level 3 — Not sure where your real dependencies are?

Before moving anything, map what you actually depend on. List every tool you use, where it's hosted, and what you'd lose if access disappeared tomorrow. It takes less than an hour and changes how you see your entire stack.

Ready to Take Stock of Your Digital Stack?

This is exactly what we help solopreneurs and small European businesses do at Gorithmus — map your current dependencies, identify your real risks, and build a pragmatic plan to reduce them. No unnecessary complexity. No pressure to self-host everything.

Next: what happens to your tools when your geography becomes a problem — and what that means for how you build your stack.