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Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

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Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#111

Post by alufers »

jacquesm wrote: post #26

Except of course that it isn't an artisanal choice, a very practical one that is made increasingly impossible by the few very large email providers that are left. It should be as simple as hosting a web server. Speaking of which, how long before it won't be possible to host your own web server? On another note: the biggest source of spam is gmail itself, and guess what, that makes it to my inbox just fine, because wh…

> Speaking of which, how long before it won't be possible to host your own web server?

It's increasingly getting harder and harder. Recently I was trying to watch a TV show with my friends using a self-hosted Plex server, which was located in one of my friend's house, connected via a gigabit, albeit residential link. Another friend was using LTE internet at that time. He couldn't watch the show, because his connection was so slow, but when he did a speed test the download speed was good enough (100+ Mbit).

Turns out the mobile carrier was throttling connections to select IP ranges to about 1 Mbit (we tested that with a few other IPs). I reckon it was to cripple peer-to-peer protocols. So I guess it's a matter of time until you will be allowed only to connect to certain IP addresses owned by the biggest companies (AWS, Azure, GCP) and nothing else.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#112

Post by tpxl »

jacquesm wrote: post #101
pjc50 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> biggest source of spam is gmail itself [citation needed]; is this actually going out from gmail or does it just use gmail return addresses? I too used to run my own email from about 2000-2010, but the maintenance overhead is quite stressful especially because it always happens for critical times or critical emails.

The citation you are looking for is my inbox. That's the spam that still makes it through and there is quite a bit of it, conversely some ham consistently gets misclassified as spam or just simply disappears entirely. You are of course welcome to not believe me.

I will echo this experience. An example of an email that made it through from a gmail.com account (abbreviated, it also contained links to some apps (the main purpose I assume) and much more text):

شهر مجاني عند الاشتراك السنوي $ الأسئلة الشائعة

    In 1979, LA residents were wearing masks — because of smog Los Angeles Times staff photographer Boris Yaro photographed Sera Segal-Alsberg on Crescent Heights Boulevard in West Hollywood Segal-Alsberg, an artist-instructor, was en route to teach a class at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
    للمزيد من الأسئلة

    — In another sign of live entertainment’s rebirth, Bruce Springsteen returned to Broadway over the weekend
    يقوم الموظفين بتسجيل حضورهم ، انصرافهم الشركات العصرية مع الاستفادة القصوى من الإمكانيات الهائلة التي تقدمها لنا تكنولوجيا العصر أو الهاتف المتحرك ( الجوال ) أو إذا كنت تستخدم الحاسب فيمكنك استخدام أو يمكن للإداري تحميل هذا التطبيق على جهاز تابلت اشترك في النظام 10

    Diverse yet divided cities
    واحد أو عدة أجهزة ثم يضعها اشترك في النظام تسجيل دخول فقط في الأفرع المسموح له بالتبصيم فيها  |  أسبوعين كما أن الموظف لديك يستطيع التبصيم في ثوان قليلة بريد إلكتروني هو نظام إلكتروني قوي وحديث يستخدم لتسجيل فهل يمكن استخدام النظام في جميع هذه الأفرع أدخل بيانات الأفرع إن وجدت الموظفين

    Experts say the Delta variant poses a greater chance of infection for unvaccinated people if they are exposed The variant, first identified in India, may be twice as transmissible as the conventional coronavirus strains It has been responsible for the rise in cases recently in India, the United Kingdom and elsewhere
    في مداخل الشركة أو أفرعها المختلفة يمكنك الاعتماد على أي جهاز إلكتورني حديث أو حتى قديم في تسجيل ومتابعة تبصيمات الموظفين ، إعرف المزيد اشترك في النظام مجانا , أدخل بيانات الشركة والموظفين

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#113

Post by mysterydip »

rmdes wrote: post #6

Someone should try "artisanal email server" using cloudron or yunohost ! the bigger problem is that "authoritative" email monopolies such as Gmail, 365 and the other big ones arbitrarily define and impose what is a legit email server or not and even with better score than gmail an "artisanal" email server can suffer from being classified into spam by the big tech players just because they can and will do anything to…

The most frustrating part is someone who isn't getting your mail will blame it on you. "I get everyone else's (gmail/outlook) email, it must be you."

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#114

Post by ancarda »

pjc50 wrote: post #93
jacquesm wrote: post #26

Except of course that it isn't an artisanal choice, a very practical one that is made increasingly impossible by the few very large email providers that are left. It should be as simple as hosting a web server. Speaking of which, how long before it won't be possible to host your own web server? On another note: the biggest source of spam is gmail itself, and guess what, that makes it to my inbox just fine, because wh…

> biggest source of spam is gmail itself [citation needed]; is this actually going out from gmail or does it just use gmail return addresses? I too used to run my own email from about 2000-2010, but the maintenance overhead is quite stressful especially because it always happens for critical times or critical emails.

Almost all spam I receive is from Gmail. It's gotten so bad I've actually setup a filter that routes everything from @gmail.com into spam - except for some whitelisted email addresses. G Suite is fine, it's only @gmail.com that is an issue

And yes, it's genuinely from Gmail; valid SPF, valid DKIM, came from a Google IP address, etc...

To say the biggest source is Gmail might be technically wrong though - I suspect there's a large volume of spam that Migadu (my provider) is dropping before it even reaches my inbox, i.e. emails that it is 100% sure are spam and it can just drop. Nevertheless, an overwhelming amount of spam I observe/have to deal with is coming from Gmail. Second to that is outlook/hotmail.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#115

Post by vbezhenar »

adtac wrote: post #48
pacija wrote: post #35

As usual, it is a financial one. Do you have ~30,000 EUR / year for skilled admin? Plus ~20,000 EUR / year for hardware and other running costs? If you do, you can have your emails safely and reliably exchanged from your basement. If you don't, you can rent whatever on the 'net that suits your budget.

It absolutely doesn't cost 20k EUR/yr in hardware to run a email server, but the time sink is ridiculous.

In my experience the time sink is high when you're setting it up. Then it's mostly zero.

Though I'm not sure I'd recommend to invest into it. Back in the days that unix knowledge was valuable and setting up your own e-mail was a good way to learn thing or two. These days those skills are useless for most people, so I'd say use hosted mail and spend that time learning some more valuable skills.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#116

Post by hamilyon2 »

tdrdt wrote: post #74
jacquesm wrote: post #26

Except of course that it isn't an artisanal choice, a very practical one that is made increasingly impossible by the few very large email providers that are left. It should be as simple as hosting a web server. Speaking of which, how long before it won't be possible to host your own web server? On another note: the biggest source of spam is gmail itself, and guess what, that makes it to my inbox just fine, because wh…

"Except of course that it isn't an artisanal choice, a very practical one that is made increasingly impossible by the few very large email providers that are left. It should be as simple as hosting a web server." I don't get this one. How do large email providers make it difficult to host your own email? I host my own email. It was a pain to setup so I try not to touch it since it is running fine. Setting up email on…

Even if your ip address/domain is not in the blacklist right now, it only takes a few people marking your correspondence as spam for it to be blacklisted. Since everyone is on these big free providers, nobody will ever see a single email from you any more. With less centrally controlled email, that would not be possible. I think that is the problem everyone is talking about.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#117

Post by monsieurbanana »

Retric wrote: post #110
jacquesm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do large email providers make it difficult to host your own email? By randomly marking your email as spam without any recourse. This may be because they blacklist your provider en bloc, your IP address or some subnet, because they feel like it, it's Tuesday or because their spam filters suck. But it happens and it happens often enough that running a business in that way will cost you money, sometimes lots of it…

Business use of email tends to look a lot like spam and people mark it as such. An appointment reminder or notification that something just shipped is generally fine. Send out mass notification of your holiday sales and that’s going into someone’s spam folder.

> generally fine

So you're saying that anything can get you blacklisted if you're unlucky enough? I think that's the point of the people you're arguing with.

At this point we just need to figure exactly how unlucky.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#118

Post by luckylion »

leephillips wrote: post #106
hannob wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm running an email server and I can tell you that this is by and large not the case. If you put some decent effort into making sure that you don't send spam, try to monitor if anyone thinks you send spam and react when someone complains that you send spam (and stop it), it works. In my experience people telling these stories often do send spam, but they don't believe they do. ("It's not spam, it's a Newsletter. No,…

Exactly. I’ve been running my own email server for over a decade not because I think I’m artisanal, but for practical reasons. But I don’t send out spam or “newletters”.

Or any kind of transactional email, I assume?

I've run a hobby website for about 15 years that does not even have a newsletter of any kind, and includes "stop sending me emails" in each transactional email (all users are double opt-in verified), and password resets are still not delivered half the time to gmail addresses.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#119

Post by superkuh »

hannob wrote: post #70
rmdes wrote: post #6

Someone should try "artisanal email server" using cloudron or yunohost ! the bigger problem is that "authoritative" email monopolies such as Gmail, 365 and the other big ones arbitrarily define and impose what is a legit email server or not and even with better score than gmail an "artisanal" email server can suffer from being classified into spam by the big tech players just because they can and will do anything to…

I'm running an email server and I can tell you that this is by and large not the case. If you put some decent effort into making sure that you don't send spam, try to monitor if anyone thinks you send spam and react when someone complains that you send spam (and stop it), it works. In my experience people telling these stories often do send spam, but they don't believe they do. ("It's not spam, it's a Newsletter. No,…

I've run an email server for 10 years now and by and large this is the case. I am the only person that uses my domain/IP/mailserver. I know it doesn't send spam. I've still been blocked by MS Office 365, marked as spam by google, etc, every few years. It's quite a hassle to get unblocked involving lots of lying about having a Microsoft account or the like to tech support till you get to techs who actually know what a mailserver is.

Frankly, I'm shocked you've never been arbitrarily blocked and I find your insinuations offensive.

The last time I was getting blocked it was the solarwinds fiasco where their internal mail tunneling/forwarding and filtering setup broke all DKIM and suddenly solarwinds users like NOAA.gov were rejecting me and adding me to naughty lists. There was no fallout for the megacorps and their broken setups. There was only damage to independent mailserver operators doing the right thing.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#120

Post by throwaway09223 »

hannob wrote: post #70
rmdes wrote: post #6

Someone should try "artisanal email server" using cloudron or yunohost ! the bigger problem is that "authoritative" email monopolies such as Gmail, 365 and the other big ones arbitrarily define and impose what is a legit email server or not and even with better score than gmail an "artisanal" email server can suffer from being classified into spam by the big tech players just because they can and will do anything to…

I'm running an email server and I can tell you that this is by and large not the case. If you put some decent effort into making sure that you don't send spam, try to monitor if anyone thinks you send spam and react when someone complains that you send spam (and stop it), it works. In my experience people telling these stories often do send spam, but they don't believe they do. ("It's not spam, it's a Newsletter. No,…

As other are saying this just isn't true.

I've run my own email for decades and I've designed and run some pretty big commercial installations.

As a small provider, you run the risk of existing in a netblock used by other people sending spam. A small co-op I ran encountered this problem once. They were operating on the cheap and while they weren't sending spam their neighbors had been.

Even as a large provider at a billion dollar company, figuring out delivery issues is a huge pain and generally not worth it. There are unofficial professional postmaster meetups around the bay and these can be helpful in getting escalation contacts to fix issues, but even with entire teams of people dedicated it's a lot to handle and is usually worthwhile to outsource the work to other companies who already have these types of relationships established.

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