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Maildog – Hosting email forwarding service on AWS with GitHub Actions

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Re: Maildog – Hosting email forwarding service on AWS with GitHub Actions

#41
I run email for two companies. In both cases, everything from SES goes straight to quarantine and users never see it. I would just reject SES altogether but once in a while something legit comes in and someone asks me to release it. I see a massive amount of spam from SES and pretty much all email service providers.

Re: Maildog – Hosting email forwarding service on AWS with GitHub Actions

#42

I run email for two companies. In both cases, everything from SES goes straight to quarantine and users never see it. I would just reject SES altogether but once in a while something legit comes in and someone asks me to release it. I see a massive amount of spam from SES and pretty much all email service providers.

> I see a massive amount of spam from SES

Okay.

> and pretty much all email service providers.

Uh, how do you handle email then? Which provider do you use / can you recommend?

Re: Maildog – Hosting email forwarding service on AWS with GitHub Actions

#43
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also note that Github will deactivate cron actions if there is no activity in the repo for 60 days. https://github.community/t/do-disabled-scheduled-workflows-r...

Obviously you can automate that with another repo that has a cron job to push a dummy commit every 30 days.

In fact, they can play ping pong and keep each other going forever :)

Re: Maildog – Hosting email forwarding service on AWS with GitHub Actions

#44
post #3

This feels like it's pushing the TOS for Github Actions a bit by using it for post deployment, live operations. Like the hourly health check and your dead letter queue scheduler. It made me curious, so I looked at their TOS[1], and they seem somewhat permissive about things like this. Though vague about where/when you cross the line. Like, this seems clear: "should not be used for...any other activity unrelated to th…

Interesting. I use Github Actions to tag incoming bugs with a "needs-triage" tag. That is not related to production, testing, deployment, or publication, so I guess I'm not in compliance.

Re: Maildog – Hosting email forwarding service on AWS with GitHub Actions

#45
post #3

This feels like it's pushing the TOS for Github Actions a bit by using it for post deployment, live operations. Like the hourly health check and your dead letter queue scheduler. It made me curious, so I looked at their TOS[1], and they seem somewhat permissive about things like this. Though vague about where/when you cross the line. Like, this seems clear: "should not be used for...any other activity unrelated to th…

Also note that Github will deactivate cron actions if there is no activity in the repo for 60 days. https://github.community/t/do-disabled-scheduled-workflows-r...

I have a crown action which commits its own log. So, always active!

Re: Maildog – Hosting email forwarding service on AWS with GitHub Actions

#46
post #42

I run email for two companies. In both cases, everything from SES goes straight to quarantine and users never see it. I would just reject SES altogether but once in a while something legit comes in and someone asks me to release it. I see a massive amount of spam from SES and pretty much all email service providers.

> I see a massive amount of spam from SES Okay. > and pretty much all email service providers. Uh, how do you handle email then? Which provider do you use / can you recommend?

I don't see it as a which provider issue. If you receive email you will receive spam from all over. On the receiving end, I treat providers differently based on what we get. I see a lot of phishing and advertising from SES but we use Amazon so I can't reject it. I almost exclusively see phishing attempts from SendGrid so I outright reject email from SendGrid. So many things and people use gmail that I can't block gmail but I do increase its spam score. I see phishing attempts from gmail accounts almost every day, I report them to Google. Its the phishing that worries me most, seems incredibly easy to sign up for a service like SendGrid and start phishing people. Not one of these email service providers can/will globally block recipients in its network - one is forced to play a game of whack-a-mole, which means the bad guys always win.

In terms of outbound email, I have a very Dilbert answer for you. The marketing guy picked Constant Contact and we use that. I have no idea how good deliverability is with CC vs anyone else. We use an opt-in email list, don't send a lot of communications, and immediately honor opt-outs.

Re: Maildog – Hosting email forwarding service on AWS with GitHub Actions

#47
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also note that Github will deactivate cron actions if there is no activity in the repo for 60 days. https://github.community/t/do-disabled-scheduled-workflows-r...

Obviously you can automate that with another repo that has a cron job to push a dummy commit every 30 days.

You don't need seperate repository for that. You can use Personal Access Token & self-push.

Re: Maildog – Hosting email forwarding service on AWS with GitHub Actions

#48

Please, oh please, do not forward email. https://www.tidbitsfortechs.com/2018/06/email-forwarding-is-... ^ I am the author of that article. If this is a different kind of mail forwarding, then please educate me as to how. Thanks :)

Interesting article, I'm not sure if it applies to my situation or not. I use ImprovMX to forward several domains to one of my other domains.

I think one thing the article doesn't really mention is that the domain sending the email is only one (potentially small) factor in classifying email as spam or not. Gmail has done just fine classifying different emails as spam that are being forwarded from the same domain. After all think of how much spam is sent from the gmail.com domain.

Re: Maildog – Hosting email forwarding service on AWS with GitHub Actions

#49
post #10

Seems like a lot more hassle than using purelymail[0] for $10 a year, which has full Sieve and SpamAssassin and sub-addressing. 0. https://purelymail.com/pricing

This is great! Thank you. There is also https://forwardemail.net/ which is a different service.

Also anonaddy.com which provides better privacy at 1$/month for custom domains.
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