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A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

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Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#121
post #91
post #7

Reading it I get that AWS now by default restricts email by - 200 mails per day max. 1 per second. - Can only send mail to verified addresses. Not sure how they verify though. - Can only send mail from the domain you own and verified. All these are good steps. Guess that will gradually take AWS IPs out of all those mail blacklists. And while we are on the topic, I find IP based mail blacklist services such as BRBL ob…

> I find IP based mail blacklist services such as BRBL obsolete and possibly harmful. Now that we have domain verification services like DKIM SPF etc. Blacklist the domain. SPF and DKIM require opt-in by the sending domain, of which the majority of non-commercial non-US outgoing MTAs do not do. IP-based blocklists, including Spamhaus PSBL Mailspike etc, are all valuable to catch IP addresses that should not be direct…

> Botnets continue to be the number one source of junk email and will likely continue as we add more and more insecure doorbells, garage openers, refrigerators, etc, to our home networks.

Surely that's an argument against blocking IPs?

Unless I suppose you argue they're predominantly in homes; and homes are predominantly not running (intentional, well-behaved) email servers, so sorry-not-sorry those who are.

Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#122
post #106
post #22

A serverless server? It is a great illustration of how the term "serverless" has shifted from literally no server (ex: sqlite database) to "somebody else's computer".

Serverless has become a stupid marketing term, just like Facebook hijacked the words “Friend” and “Like”. I look forward to true serverless software - that is either peer to peer or uses a distributed back-end with encryption. Now THAT is the future! Serverless just means “we spin up a server for you”, similarly to how “the cloud” is just a euphemism for “extreme centralization of hosting myriad clients under the con…

Serverless just means “we spin up a server for you”

Thank you for "spin up a server," as in fire up the hard drives, rather than "stand up a server," as in... I dunno.

Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#124
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was doing serverless pages back in late 90s when I uploaded PHP scripts to "website providers".

true serverless

Why "true"? I don't have to worry about servers and infrastructure with Lambdas either.

Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#125
post #41

I'd love to see the cost difference between this solution and running an EC2 instance with a traditional lite mail server (like perhaps courier).

Email from EC2 instances will be blocked because of the high amount of spam that comes from those IPs.

Interesting, thanks for sharing. Not sure why folks downvoted the comment, it being a plea for more information.

Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#126

I'm confused, does this use different IP addresses constantly? How is this mailserver able to send email without an IP based reputation? Is it just that Amazon is so giant other mega-corp email providers are wary to blacklist their IP range? If so this is a wonderful way to send spam without ever worrying about IP reputation. I imagine it will be abused and then blacklisted quickly.

The Lambda doesn't send or receive email directly, it uses SES. SES handles this in a delegated way via DKIM signatures (Domain Keys Identified Mail).

The domain signing with DKIM still doesn't get you a valid IP reputation. It may help to gradually build one if it's the same IP over and over, but it's still a brand new IP suddenly sending mail from $domain. If it weren't an amazon IP it'd certainly get refused or at least marked as spam and hidden after acceptance.

Just another example of one set of rules for human people and another for corporate people. Either pledge yourself to a corporate feudal lord (amazon here) or suffer.

Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#127
post #22

A serverless server? It is a great illustration of how the term "serverless" has shifted from literally no server (ex: sqlite database) to "somebody else's computer".

We went through this when people first started calling quadcopters "drones".

It's just a term used to describe a server configuration that has different billing/operational characteristics than traditional always-on.

And like the quadcopter-drone, I hope everyone losing their shit over this can either accept "serverless" or submit and market a new term that conveys this difference soon.

Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#128
post #41

I'd love to see the cost difference between this solution and running an EC2 instance with a traditional lite mail server (like perhaps courier).

Email from EC2 instances will be blocked because of the high amount of spam that comes from those IPs.

Yeah, you have to request amazon to remove the throttling from your network.

It took few year for aws to document that they have this limitation on their network.

https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/ec2-p...

Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#129
post #96

When the documentation says "this may cost you money" what they really mean is "this will cost you a lot of money the moment your email address gets onto any spam lists". The number of lambda invocations will go through the roof, and even if you're able to catch 90% of the spam before dumping messages into S3, the cost of putting a message into a bucket will make your bill skyrocket periodically as spammers temporari…

depends how you define a lot of money.

How much would this cost to receive 30k messages per month?

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