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Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service

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Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service

#11

Post by mekster »

mmcclure wrote: post #10

This is a really cool project, so I don't mean to be overly negative, but personally this workflow feels quite a bit more laborious than just having a catch-all email address. Before signing up for a service, I need to email myself to get an address to use for the service? I have all emails for my domain route to me, so when I use a service I just do [service-name]@my-domain.com. If a bad actor gets a hold of it I se…

For groups of people, you can also do,

[service-name]@[user-name].my-domain.com

to provide everyone the same capability.

Email aliases ([user-name]+[service-name]@my-domain.com) isn't the best solution when spammers can remove the alias part (+[service-name]) and you can't know who leaked it.

Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service

#12

Post by caymanjim »

mmcclure wrote: post #10

This is a really cool project, so I don't mean to be overly negative, but personally this workflow feels quite a bit more laborious than just having a catch-all email address. Before signing up for a service, I need to email myself to get an address to use for the service? I have all emails for my domain route to me, so when I use a service I just do [service-name]@my-domain.com. If a bad actor gets a hold of it I se…

You're going to get an astronomical amount of junk mail with a catchall email address. Google is great at filtering spam, but not perfect. If you're running your own mail server, you're going to have a hard time dealing with it, even if you use SpamAssassin and other tools. It's also going to get worse over time, because every address that accepts delivery is going to get added to a database for future spamming.

I use Postfix and ViMbAdmin to manage my whitelist via a simple web UI, and I don't find it to be onerous. I don't sign up for new services every day, and it takes about ten seconds to add or delete a service-specific alias.

Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service

#13

Post by christefano »

FYI, the developer has a writeup about the design behind this project: https://medium.com/@fabianterh/how-i-built-heimdall-an-open-...

At first I was confused and trying to figure out what AWS services Heimdall uses to work, and this was the section that explained it:

  Infrastructure
  
  I’m using AWS’s Simple Email Service (SES) to send and receive emails, S3 for storage, and Lambda functions for serverless computing. Here’s how it works:
  
  All received emails trigger SES to store the email as a file in a S3 bucket, which triggers a Lambda function. Depending on the email, one of several things could happen:
  
  1. The email gets forwarded to your personal email address
  2. The email gets forwarded to the original sender (when you reply)
  3. A command is invoked by you (e.g. to generate a new alias)
  4. Nothing happens (when someone emails an invalid/disabled alias)
  
  I chose to use AWS for practical reasons: I’m totally new to cloud computing, and AWS being the most popular cloud computing service means it is easier to find guides and resources online.

Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service

#15

Post by honopu »

andrewkdinh wrote: post #3

You might consider using a different name, as there’s already a pretty popular dashboard called Heimdall [1] [1] https://github.com/linuxserver/Heimdall

There’s also a db proxy you can run yourself that sits in front of Postgres and maybe others also named Heimdall. It’s like varnish for your db.

Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service

#16

Post by milankragujevic »

andrewkdinh wrote: post #3

You might consider using a different name, as there’s already a pretty popular dashboard called Heimdall [1] [1] https://github.com/linuxserver/Heimdall

There is also the tool for flashing Samsung Android phone firmware on Linux...

https://gitlab.com/BenjaminDobell/Heimdall

Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service

#17

Post by moonlighter »

caymanjim wrote: post #12
mmcclure wrote: post #10

This is a really cool project, so I don't mean to be overly negative, but personally this workflow feels quite a bit more laborious than just having a catch-all email address. Before signing up for a service, I need to email myself to get an address to use for the service? I have all emails for my domain route to me, so when I use a service I just do [service-name]@my-domain.com. If a bad actor gets a hold of it I se…

You're going to get an astronomical amount of junk mail with a catchall email address. Google is great at filtering spam, but not perfect. If you're running your own mail server, you're going to have a hard time dealing with it, even if you use SpamAssassin and other tools. It's also going to get worse over time, because every address that accepts delivery is going to get added to a database for future spamming. I us…

I disagree with the "astronomical amount of junk mail" statement. I've been using FastMail with a catchall email address for years, and get very little spam; most of which is correctly classified as such (I did have to 'train' FastMail for a while with custom spam/no spam folders though).

Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service

#18

Post by btmiller »

mmcclure wrote: post #10

This is a really cool project, so I don't mean to be overly negative, but personally this workflow feels quite a bit more laborious than just having a catch-all email address. Before signing up for a service, I need to email myself to get an address to use for the service? I have all emails for my domain route to me, so when I use a service I just do [service-name]@my-domain.com. If a bad actor gets a hold of it I se…

Totally agreed, I do not want to manage my own workflow in a manner like this. I actually just put a doc together[1] last month for anyone looking to do the same through providers that support this workflow.

The one killer feature that is missing in Fastmail right now is the ability to reply to email as the same alias it was received as. I.e. if Airbnb support emails me at airbnb@mydomain.com, it'll default replay as me@mydomain.com unless I go manually setup the airbnb alias.

[1] https://btmiller.com/2019/12/12/regain-control-over-your-inb...

Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service

#19

Post by airstrike »

christefano wrote: post #13

FYI, the developer has a writeup about the design behind this project: https://medium.com/@fabianterh/how-i-built-heimdall-an-open-... At first I was confused and trying to figure out what AWS services Heimdall uses to work, and this was the section that explained it: Infrastructure I’m using AWS’s Simple Email Service (SES) to send and receive emails, S3 for storage, and Lambda functions for serverless computing. He…

> Infrastructure

> I’m using AWS’s Simple Email Service (SES) to send and receive emails, S3 for storage, and Lambda functions for serverless computing. Here’s how it works:

> All received emails trigger SES to store the email as a file in a S3 bucket, which triggers a Lambda function. Depending on the email, one of several things could happen:

> 1. The email gets forwarded to your personal email address > 2. The email gets forwarded to the original sender (when you reply) > 3. A command is invoked by you (e.g. to generate a new alias) > 4. Nothing happens (when someone emails an invalid/disabled alias)

> I chose to use AWS for practical reasons: I’m totally new to cloud computing, and AWS being the most popular cloud computing service means it is easier to find guides and resources online.

Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service

#20

Post by daseiner1 »

airstrike wrote: post #19
christefano wrote: post #13

FYI, the developer has a writeup about the design behind this project: https://medium.com/@fabianterh/how-i-built-heimdall-an-open-... At first I was confused and trying to figure out what AWS services Heimdall uses to work, and this was the section that explained it: Infrastructure I’m using AWS’s Simple Email Service (SES) to send and receive emails, S3 for storage, and Lambda functions for serverless computing. He…

> Infrastructure > I’m using AWS’s Simple Email Service (SES) to send and receive emails, S3 for storage, and Lambda functions for serverless computing. Here’s how it works: > All received emails trigger SES to store the email as a file in a S3 bucket, which triggers a Lambda function. Depending on the email, one of several things could happen: > 1. The email gets forwarded to your personal email address > 2. The ema…

thank you
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