Helm: Personal Email Server • Hacker News Board

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#271

Post by specialp » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 3:56 PM UTC

CogitoCogito wrote: post #175

specialp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can send email from an EC2 instance but good luck getting anyone to accept it. A lot of email providers block EC2 wholesale, or if they do accept it you are going to have to have a long standing reputation.

What do you mean by blocking "wholesale"? I started hosting an email server in EC2 and the worst I've had is my emails going to a spam folder if that person hasn't received an email from my address yet (and never after they've marked me as not being spam). That happened surprisingly rarely and didn't feel like much worse than I would get by just sending people email from gmail with an address they don't know. I don't…

It depends on whom you send to. Like ironically I sent an abuse complaint to Verizon for a spammer and got rejected because they blocked all of Digital Ocean's IP space. Yahoo was particularly difficult too sending me a response saying they won't take my mail immediately on a single email to my brother. I had to go through a lot to get that fixed. Again this was due to being on cloud provider IP space.

GMail is more reasonable with perhaps being spam filtered but never blocked outright. I have also been blocked by government labs and academic institutions. I also have complied with RDNS, DKIM, SPF and got a top score on mx toolbox. Now that I have been up for a while I have had less issues besides with the ones that block cloud provider spaces.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#272

Post by cycop » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

gsreenivas wrote: post #253

TrueDuality wrote: post #225

You mention that you use a hardened Linux OS, but you don't discuss any of the other opensource software that you use. While you technically only have to distribute the sources to the people that receive your hardware, it would be nice to know these kinds of things before purchasing. This is a niche market you're marketing to that has a history of researching these kinds of things. Are you using a custom distro or on…

Hi TrueDuality - Giri Sreenivas, co-founder and CEO of Helm here. We will be publishing more details to answer your questions in depth in a series of coming posts. I'll give you some quick answers right now. We use Yocto to spin our own Linux build. Key projects we utilize: OpenLDAP Postfix Dovecot Darwin Calendar and Contacts Certbot OpenDMARC OpenDKIM OpenSSL Python SPF Policy Sieve SpamAssassin Duplicity StrongSwa…

I would like to see the option for backups to be held on you own own cloud account of choice. I am in Canada and I use a Canadian cloud company called sync.com for my secured data storage knowing it will not be stored in the US.

The price point is also a bit high for a Canadian Customer, so I like the idea but a bit too pricey for North of the boarder after currency exchange.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#273

Post by paxys » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 4:02 PM UTC

_verandaguy wrote: post #24

jawns wrote: post #9

Don't most ISPs ban residential accounts from running something like this? Comcast terms: > use or run dedicated, stand-alone equipment or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises local area network (“Premises LAN”), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited equipment and servers include, but are not limited t…

Holy crap, US ISPs are completely absurd. This definitely isn't a thing (or at least not enforced in any way) in Canada; most of my friends run on-prem web services out of their basements or closets.

Read your terms of service. The same section is definitely present for all Canadian ISPs as well.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#274

Post by dguo » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

Just a heads up to any Helm employees, it looks like the website is running React in development mode. It should be easy to fix: https://reactjs.org/docs/optimizing-performance.html#use-the...

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#275

Post by cycop » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

xienze wrote: post #193

heavenlyhash wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, "a fraction" is "half" in this case, which is actually pretty close to par in my mind. And that's what I pay for one address for a year; so if this is more addresses and more domains at better scaling prices, that's quite interesting.

Fastmail lets you use all the domains you want with one account, it just routes the messages to a different folder. Also, remember the $99 per year is AFTER shelling out $500 for the device.

Until the device fails and you need to replace.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#276

Post by cwyers » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

morley wrote: post #141

cwyers wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I can trust someone to do off-site cloud backups of my e-mail, why can't I trust the same person to run a Fastmail-like service so I don't have to have a $500 server in my house to get e-mail?

I don't understand why you're so upset about this. If you don't think the product is a good value for your time and money, that's fine: don't purchase it. I think Helm comes with some obvious trade-offs, but the product looks nice and I think (judging from other HN comments) there's a market for it. I don't know if it's a large market for this to be a success, but it seems interesting at least, and at first blush the…

Because it bothers me when someone sells a "secure" product where the security measures are unrelated to the threat model. The Helm server is connected to the open Internet, which means that physical possession of the Helm server is not the only or even main thing necessary to secure it from compromise. Because of how it works, the server still has a dependency on cloud providers -- you need cloud backups and the public endpoint for the ssh tunnel to get around ISP packet sniffing. Since I still need to trust other people's servers for this to work, why the focus on owning your own server?

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#277

Post by cwyers » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 4:04 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #172

Please don't be a jerk on HN ("Oh come on", "modern art installation"). Your question would be just fine without those bits. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Understood. Comment edited.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#278

Post by Alex3917 » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

garry wrote: post #254

paraditedc wrote: post #241

I read the whole tech page and some of the comments here. I might be willing to pay for this service, but not in its current form. I wouldn't want to spend 500USD on a proprietary hardware in addition to paying a subscription fee. What needs to happen to convince me to pay: Open up the hardware component as a platform for anyone to extend (allowing direct ssh, or using my own hardware). It's fine to not open source t…

This is extremely valuable feedback and worth strongly considering. When the iPhone came out, it didn't support apps - just built-in features like Mail and Mobile Safari. I agree with you that an app store for Helm could be valuable.

This could be especially valuable as a way to build email apps for enterprise. Especially if there were a good API that returned email data in JMAP format.

I know Nylas tries to do this, but their model doesn't really work for me.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#279

Post by kukx » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 4:06 PM UTC

A2017U1 wrote: post #240

ryan-c wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most (gmail claims ~90%) email is encrypted with opportunistic TLS in transit and can't be passively monitored. https://transparencyreport.google.com/safer-email/overview?h... Further, "the provider could intercept email" and "the provider stores all email" are very very different.

What's going on there with the "Support for encryption in transit" section? Overwhelmingly at 0% in most regions which they say are: > domains in terms of volume of email to and from Gmail, in alphabetical order Something doesn't add up there.

The table does not include the "green" domains by default, you have to select it.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#280

Post by scruffyherder » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

So they use a registered ip proxy to your own email server. I've been doing that for a super long time, and it's a great solution, at least until about 5 years ago.

Most providers will blacklist anyone who isn't one of them. So I front my home email server with a big account to relay in and out of. It kinda sucks, but all my stuff just works.

So I can happily fire up my Macintosh II, load up Outlook 98 and read email.

I use Office 365 to front my domain, I think it's like $12 a month for the corporate version so I can have it front domain emails. And that means I get office for all my devices so I'm not the one having to deal with having old versions of stuff.