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Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

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Re: Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

#131

Post by deeblering4 »

spinax wrote: post #128
deeblering4 wrote: post #79

I highly recommend scheduling a regular mbsync job to keep a local copy of your emails in sync with the imap server. With this it's easy to pick up and move to a different provider or recover from outages, account closure, etc. If you couple this with your own domain your email will be very portable.

I pay for a second inexpensive mailbox at Mailfence and sync the contents of the Fastmail account to a subfolder of the Mailfence account. There is rate-limiting involved, so my config is dialed down on "pipelinedepth" to ensure I don't hit that problem (you can easily overrun the Mailfence side pushing too much too fast). The cron runs via a unique user account on a cloud server every 4 hours using unique passwords…

Nice idea to copy between imap accounts, I might set that up in addition to my local backups.

How do you like mailfence overall?

Re: Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

#132

Post by bythckr »

deeblering4 wrote: post #79

I highly recommend scheduling a regular mbsync job to keep a local copy of your emails in sync with the imap server. With this it's easy to pick up and move to a different provider or recover from outages, account closure, etc. If you couple this with your own domain your email will be very portable.

In another discussion somewhere on the internet, someone mentioned using a service but I could not find any details and the person didn't reply.

The service is to send & receive email. But the storage capacity was less and the service only has a imap & smtp address and no webmail. Basically the service focuses on ensuring the emails are sent & received. The person has a webserver hosted at home that copies the emails from that server and incase of sending email, sends via that server. Then all the content of the home server is backed up at some off-site backup service.

Any idea which is the services being used and how would such a system be rated? It sounds like you are doing something similiar.

Re: Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

#133

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

deeblering4 wrote: post #79

I highly recommend scheduling a regular mbsync job to keep a local copy of your emails in sync with the imap server. With this it's easy to pick up and move to a different provider or recover from outages, account closure, etc. If you couple this with your own domain your email will be very portable.

I use a traditional local email client: macOS's Mail.app. It stores a copy of every email.

What's the point of using mbsync?

Re: Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

#134

Post by ivrrimum »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #4

I wonder if the fastmail protocol could be hidden in AWS-like data streams to take an approach like telegram. If they try to block it, they shut down their entire digital business infrastructure. I have been looking for an alternative to Gmail, does anyone have recommendations? Fastmail? Proton mail? What put me over the edge is my young friend had a heart attack, went to the hospital and (during recovery) logged int…

I have my own Digital Ocean droplet and have a docker_mailer smt server. Super easy to setup + you dont rely on big tech for basic email service.

Re: Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

#136

Post by spinax »

deeblering4 wrote: post #131
spinax wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay for a second inexpensive mailbox at Mailfence and sync the contents of the Fastmail account to a subfolder of the Mailfence account. There is rate-limiting involved, so my config is dialed down on "pipelinedepth" to ensure I don't hit that problem (you can easily overrun the Mailfence side pushing too much too fast). The cron runs via a unique user account on a cloud server every 4 hours using unique passwords…

Nice idea to copy between imap accounts, I might set that up in addition to my local backups. How do you like mailfence overall?

It seems just fine? As it's my secondary account it's mostly SMTP idle so I can't give an honest opinion about delivery (like emails from your bank) but it seems to be doing very well as a service. Like Fastmail, they have a detailed domain setup wizard to ensure all your DNS for SPF/DKIM/dmarc etc. is all properly configured for best results. I have no complaints for what I use it for, really. I do wish that I had finer grained app password control like Fastmail but it's not a deal killer.

I went with Fastmail as my primary due to the enhanced feature set and crazily enough - the Notes and Files feature in their mobile app. I can take a picture, toss it into that folder and get it on my desktop quicker than finding a USB cable or running a foldersync - the Notes are similar, I replaced Google Keep by just using the Fastmail Notes functionality.

Re: Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

#137

Post by vbezhenar »

patrakov wrote: post #121
vbezhenar wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if the fastmail protocol could be hidden in AWS-like data streams to take an approach like telegram. If they try to block it, they shut down their entire digital business infrastructure. As long as server name sent in cleartext in SNI, blocking any website is trivial. Telegram uses a different approach with multitude of proxy servers and dynamic proxy changes via Apple/Google push messages. It's not applic…

> If/when encrypted SNI is widely implemented, it might work. No. China is already blocking all connections with encrypted SNI. If such services become popular or make the encrypted SNI mandatory, then the choice will be to either install a government MITM certificate or not use the internet at all.

My point is that right now Russia does not have to choose between blocking entire CDN or allowing all websites. Unencrypted SNI allows to selectively block some websites while keeping CDN for other websites untouched.

Russia's situation is far from China, AFAIK.

Re: Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

#138

Post by newscracker »

donkarma wrote: post #48
genghizkhan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll put in a recommendation for MXroute (mxroute.com). They're geared towards slightly more technical users, ime, but there's practically no limits (apart from rate of outgoing mail). Unlimited domains, unlimited aliases, unlimited accounts, even. The entire service uses DirectAdmin as a management UI so it's pretty easy to use. They've even got plans geared towards resellers. The owner/sysad is an ex-Digital Ocean…

That lifetime plan is tempting

Go to the lowendtalk.com forums and you'd probably find threads with even cheaper plans. They come with certain limitations, but are good for some people.

Re: Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

#139

Post by newscracker »

throwawaystress wrote: post #24
mensetmanusman wrote: post #4

I wonder if the fastmail protocol could be hidden in AWS-like data streams to take an approach like telegram. If they try to block it, they shut down their entire digital business infrastructure. I have been looking for an alternative to Gmail, does anyone have recommendations? Fastmail? Proton mail? What put me over the edge is my young friend had a heart attack, went to the hospital and (during recovery) logged int…

I’m also a Fastmail user (for the past 5 years or so), but I’m considering switching to iCloud, given the announcement it’ll start supporting custom domains. Fastmail is pricey ($50/month for the non-lite tier), whereas iCloud is $1/month for 50 GB.

Could you link to the iCloud announcement that says it'll start supporting custom domains? I saw that it will support disposable addresses, but didn't notice anything about custom domains.

Re: Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

#140

Post by teknopaul »

gpm wrote: post #127
clucas wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to their blog post, "If we didn't comply, they stated they had the right to block our website (and possibly all data transmission) between us and anyone within Russian borders." They were were going to be blocked anyway. So the two options were "Russian users are blocked, and the Russian government considers us law-breakers," or "Russian users are blocked, and the Russian government does not consider us law…

They might also be aiming to preserve their ability to send mail to russian mail servers, and to serve existing russian users, and to let new russian users sign up by signing up with a IP address outside of russia. I.e. a choice between "russia is ineffectively blocked by us" vs "russia is effectively blocked by the russian government".

yeah remember the block is because they don't have enough Russian customers to make complying with local data laws worth the cost/effort. They were not banned the were asked to obey the law and they weighed up pros and cons. Normal. Plenty of US sites refuse to let eu citizens view thier content because they don't want to comply with GDPR (which I consider a reasonable set of laws that protect me) Personally I use Yandex for email so the NSA can't get their hands on it and I don't have to continually fight changes in terms and conditions that want to sync my advertising id with Google or Facebook. Fastmail obeying local laws is the correct thing to do. There is no malice in the law as it is written, its just data protection _from_ the US government.
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