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Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

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Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#81

Post by garaetjjte »

eps wrote: post #66
insertnickname wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run my own mail server, and I get very little spam. Sometimes I go for days without a single spam message even getting through to my spam folder, much less my inbox. The last spam mail that got through to my spam folder was on November 25th. And it's not because spammers don't try, my server has rejected 206 mails in the last ~24 hours (and that's not counting the attempted open relay abuse). My setup consists of P…

May want to throw postgrey in a mix. Incredulously, asking first-time senders to retry in a bit still filters out the vast majority of spam.

Don't do it. There is no reason why mail cannot be instant.

Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#82

Post by kalleboo »

garaetjjte wrote: post #80
kalleboo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised to hear there are home ISPs that still allow outgoing traffic on port 25... I used to run an email server at home, and both ISPs I used required you to route all outgoing email through their SMTP server (which presumably had an outgoing spam filter on it). This worked fine for me because it meant my outgoing mail had a good reputation.

Why? I expect from ISPs to deliver IP packets to/from my address, without filtering on basis what is in payload. Though once when device connected to my wifi got infected and started sending spam, I got angry (not e)mail from ISP, so I drop tcp/25 on my router firewall.

So you, someone technical enough to set up their own email server, was spamming people, and it presumably took days or weeks for someone to report you, and you to check your mailbox and get around configuring your firewall.

Now imagine the typical user who has no idea what the letter means or how to configure their router and just ignores it...

I'm surprised your whole ISPs dynamic IP pool isn't already on every spam block list.

edit: just realized you aren't the poster I was replying to, so presumably you're not running your own email server

Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#83

Post by cobbzilla »

_andromeda_ wrote: post #48
cobbzilla wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're only concerned about delivery and can live with a third-party SMTP relay, I'd hope you could set up this system to relay through sendgrid or mailgun. If it's only for personal use, you'd probably be fine on their free plan indefinitely.

Any thoughts on SES?

I suppose any third-party email relay would give you better delivery guarantees than you achieve yourself, at least at the outset.

Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#84

Post by Kalium »

mr_blobs wrote: post #2

I setup my own mail server last year and shortly gave up on the idea. Setting the server up isn't the problem. The problem is keeping your IP off of all the major blacklists. I wasn't even sending out mass emails and 30%+ of my email would never be delivered. I had to constantly check to see if my IP addresses were on the various spam lists (and fight to get my IPs off) and I just got tired of it. Companies like Goog…

> The 'promotions' tab in gmail also made things worse for many small businesses. Google doesn't want you competing for their advertising space and pushes any emails it deems a 'promotion' off to the side, so users don't actually see it. I'm not even talking about actual spam emails here, but emails users knowingly signup for and are expecting.

The difference between what a business thinks a user has signed up for and is expecting and what an actual user is actually expecting in their actual mind tends to resemble night and day. For most users the "Promotions" tab was a godsend that rescued them from significant amounts of email that was swamping the stuff in their inboxes they expected and wanted to read. It allows users to engage with promotional material at their own choice and in their own time.

Google's smart filters have been a fantastic win for the user experience.

Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#85

Post by ProxCoques »

abverma wrote: post #64
ProxCoques wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I hear you on Gmail's overbearing influence, I'm not a sysadmin (I'm a designer and I spend most of my time talking to people about "user journeys" and fonts), but I run my own (and my family's) email using Ubuntu on a VM. There are lots of easy HOWTOS on setting up Postfix with DKIM and bind with SPF. I've got an alert on one of those blacklist monitors and not been in any blocking lists at all in several year…

You might want to switch to Lets Encrypt or a paid SSL certificate provider. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StartCom#Criticism https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2016/10/24/distrusting-new... https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA:WoSign_Issues

LetsEncrypt needs port 80 open to the outside so that it can verify/renew certificates. I don't have port 80 open on the mail server though.

Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#86

Post by jrnichols »

eikenberry wrote: post #12
mr_blobs wrote: post #2

I setup my own mail server last year and shortly gave up on the idea. Setting the server up isn't the problem. The problem is keeping your IP off of all the major blacklists. I wasn't even sending out mass emails and 30%+ of my email would never be delivered. I had to constantly check to see if my IP addresses were on the various spam lists (and fight to get my IPs off) and I just got tired of it. Companies like Goog…

Once you have SPF/DKIM in place and make sure your IP isn't already on a blacklist for some past (previous users) infractions you should be good to go. I've run my own mail server for years and have only had to remove it from a blacklist once. So once you get past some initial blacklist monitoring work, you are good to go. That does bring up the point of how to do blacklist monitoring. There are various commercial se…

"Once you have SPF/DKIM in place and make sure your IP isn't already on a blacklist for some past "

you'd think that it would be this simple, but it's not. I have had SPF/DKIM set up from day one, a totally clean IP, doesn't show up on any block lists at all, yet i'm still having some problems delivering to certain ISPs. Verizon is the biggest problem right now. I had problems delivering to Gmail because my server didn't have a good enough reputation. Everything from my IP was going right into the Gmail spam folder and there was nothing that I could do about it except sit back and wait. It took weeks for Gmail to finally decide that my reputation was good enough.

It's scary just how much power Google has over many things email these days.

Now I have to convince Verizon that my IP is not a dynamically assigned one.

Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#87

Post by jrnichols »

eps wrote: post #66
insertnickname wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run my own mail server, and I get very little spam. Sometimes I go for days without a single spam message even getting through to my spam folder, much less my inbox. The last spam mail that got through to my spam folder was on November 25th. And it's not because spammers don't try, my server has rejected 206 mails in the last ~24 hours (and that's not counting the attempted open relay abuse). My setup consists of P…

May want to throw postgrey in a mix. Incredulously, asking first-time senders to retry in a bit still filters out the vast majority of spam.

I ended up moving away from Postgrey because the delays (especially coming from Gmail) were a huge problem. Since the mail would come from some random IP in Google's massive server farm, each time it tried to get delivered, postgrey would delay it again.

Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#88

Post by Whitestrake »

ProxCoques wrote: post #85
abverma wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to switch to Lets Encrypt or a paid SSL certificate provider. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StartCom#Criticism https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2016/10/24/distrusting-new... https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA:WoSign_Issues

LetsEncrypt needs port 80 open to the outside so that it can verify/renew certificates. I don't have port 80 open on the mail server though.

LetsEncrypt actually has multiple options available for validation. Only one challenge type, http-01, requires port 80 to be open. Another, tls-sni-01, requires port 443. dns-01 requires configuration of your DNS provider. I personally make use of tls-sni-01 and dns-01 in different situations.

Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#89

Post by Whitestrake »

Kalium wrote: post #84
mr_blobs wrote: post #2

I setup my own mail server last year and shortly gave up on the idea. Setting the server up isn't the problem. The problem is keeping your IP off of all the major blacklists. I wasn't even sending out mass emails and 30%+ of my email would never be delivered. I had to constantly check to see if my IP addresses were on the various spam lists (and fight to get my IPs off) and I just got tired of it. Companies like Goog…

> The 'promotions' tab in gmail also made things worse for many small businesses. Google doesn't want you competing for their advertising space and pushes any emails it deems a 'promotion' off to the side, so users don't actually see it. I'm not even talking about actual spam emails here, but emails users knowingly signup for and are expecting. The difference between what a business thinks a user has signed up for an…

Agreed, for this particular point it's less about small business vs. Google and more about small business vs. users. Google stepped in and saved a lot of users a lot of time and effort. I'm not sad that it's tougher for businesses to consume my time while I'm cleaning my inbox out, I can go over the promotional stuff when I actually want to.

Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#90

Post by insertnickname »

jrnichols wrote: post #87
eps wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May want to throw postgrey in a mix. Incredulously, asking first-time senders to retry in a bit still filters out the vast majority of spam.

I ended up moving away from Postgrey because the delays (especially coming from Gmail) were a huge problem. Since the mail would come from some random IP in Google's massive server farm, each time it tried to get delivered, postgrey would delay it again.

In rspamd you can configure it so that it only greylists mails that it classifies as spam, but don't have a high enough score to reject it.
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