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Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

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Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#71
post #70

Something I've been looking for is a web service and android app that I can self-host that will allow me to read and send SMSs from my desktop. The important thing here is self hosted. I think something like this would be really useful. I've seen services that provide this via a 3rd party hosted service but I don't trust someone at some random company not to read my messages.

> I think something like this would be really useful. I've seen services that provide this via a 3rd party hosted service but I don't trust someone at some random company not to read my messages. ... do you know how SMS works? Specifically that it is sent in plaintext for anyone who cares to listen anywhere along the path? Maybe try Signal. It has a desktop app.

> ... do you know how SMS works?

Yes. Does making a bad situation worse help anyone?

I'd use Signal/RedPhone if even 5% of my contact knew what that was.

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a self-maintained version of the same email stack (Dovecot, Postfix, Spamassassin) and Spam is pretty much not a problem. I train the Bayes filter on my collection of 10,000 spams and a few thousand hams every 6 months and, while I do get an occasional false negative I feel that spam is pretty much fully under control. Self-hosting email is fun you guys!

Self-hosting email is fun you guys! I figured that it would be, but trying to set it up was the single most frustrating thing I've ever experienced running a Linux box, and I never did get anything properly working after many days of trying. The principles seemed straightforward enough and there was plenty of software available, but what I really wanted was to self-host the mail store and IMAP server but send/receive…

Well, for outbound you'd presumably want an "authenticated smarthost" with setup details on your side varying by what mail server you're using locally.

For inbound, you'd presumably want the server using fetchmail or getmail to then push them into your local mailboxes. Should be plenty of documentation on those projects.

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#73

I've done this before. It becomes tedious to maintain, but I can imagine myself doing it again in the future to allow me to do what cannot be done in the common clouds (iCloud, G Suite, O365). I would love a whitelist-only inbox. I'm sick of spam, marketing mail, etc. I'd like one public email address that catches all the garbage. Then, I'd like a private email address that accepts emails from my contacts, and bounce…

This is really easy to set up using Dovecot Sieve [1]. I set it up the other day to bounce reject messages that had too many swear words as a proof-of-concept for an idea a Facebook friend had about making sure people stay nice in email. The syntax of the server-side filters is a bit strange but there's even a Thunderbird plugin that allows you to edit them from the client. [1] https://wiki2.dovecot.org/Pigeonhole/Si…

Bouncing is a bad idea as it can be abused for spam:

1. Fake the origin to actual destination of choice

2. Your server bounces the original message wrapped by the SMTP error report.

3. Actual destination receives error report containing spam content from YOUR server

A proper solution would be to REJECT the message before it is accepted. However, Dovecot Pigenhole doesn't support that (yet).

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#74
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a self-maintained version of the same email stack (Dovecot, Postfix, Spamassassin) and Spam is pretty much not a problem. I train the Bayes filter on my collection of 10,000 spams and a few thousand hams every 6 months and, while I do get an occasional false negative I feel that spam is pretty much fully under control. Self-hosting email is fun you guys!

As long as you set up SPF, DMARC, DKIM, reverse DNS, and SSL/TLS, plus do that all correctly. Oh, and make sure you pick a provider or host whose IP ranges aren't damaged goods. And don't get me started about sender reputation with the various email providers, or the often erroneous blacklists (and fighting to get your server/IPs off and kept off). IMO, there are limitless other things I'd rather be doing than these!

You're right that all those things are needed, and it did take me a while to get them all working. But now I know about tools like mail-tester [1] that analyze your emails and tell you exactly how to fix them. Once you know what to do, it's really not that much actual work to set them up.

[1] https://www.mail-tester.com/

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#75

I started with Radicale a few years back (5+?). I found it too brittle, and switched to Baikal - http://baikal-server.com/ . I've been very pleased with Baikal for since the switch (again, 5+)

Baikal was going to be my second choice but I never got there because Radicale went pretty well.

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a self-maintained version of the same email stack (Dovecot, Postfix, Spamassassin) and Spam is pretty much not a problem. I train the Bayes filter on my collection of 10,000 spams and a few thousand hams every 6 months and, while I do get an occasional false negative I feel that spam is pretty much fully under control. Self-hosting email is fun you guys!

Self-hosting email is fun you guys! I figured that it would be, but trying to set it up was the single most frustrating thing I've ever experienced running a Linux box, and I never did get anything properly working after many days of trying. The principles seemed straightforward enough and there was plenty of software available, but what I really wanted was to self-host the mail store and IMAP server but send/receive…

Did you try exim4? That was pretty good a few years back, but honestly I took the advice to offload to service and don't run a "real" one anymore. I do on my dev box as localhost so I can test authentication scripts and the like but that's all.

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#78

Don't redact information with a blur filter! It can be reversed! Use solid color boxes.

Gaussian blur can be reversed? I assumed it was destructive. Thanks for the tip.

http://yuzhikov.com/articles/BlurredImagesRestoration1.htm

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a self-maintained version of the same email stack (Dovecot, Postfix, Spamassassin) and Spam is pretty much not a problem. I train the Bayes filter on my collection of 10,000 spams and a few thousand hams every 6 months and, while I do get an occasional false negative I feel that spam is pretty much fully under control. Self-hosting email is fun you guys!

Self-hosting email is fun you guys! I figured that it would be, but trying to set it up was the single most frustrating thing I've ever experienced running a Linux box, and I never did get anything properly working after many days of trying. The principles seemed straightforward enough and there was plenty of software available, but what I really wanted was to self-host the mail store and IMAP server but send/receive…

Most email clients allow the user to configure a separate outbound email server.
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