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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

#151

Post by teekert »

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…

You'll get it when Microsoft decides you are a spammer for no other reason then sending email from port 25 from your house. Or when you can't seem to sign up for a service... until you use your old Gmail address.

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

#152

Post by sharklazer »

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…

Having run my own email for the last two years, this is the number one problem I encounter. Somehow every official step published in terms of standards for securing email servers is not enough to appease large provider such that they’ll deliver your mail and not relegate it to spam.

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

#153

Post by feanaro »

jacquesm wrote: post #82
tdrdt wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> 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…

See the Digital Markets Act in the EU. It could be a way to force large corporations to cooperate.

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

#154

Post by sharklazer »

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 deal with this every day. Personal fully controlled server. I don’t conduct business over this server, have only one email, a personal email, associated with it.

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

#155

Post by jrm4 »

Much more needs to be said about the extreme advantages of paying someone vs. using a free service.

I've said this for over two decades: If you have a business, or even just a lot of important stuff going on in email (which is like everybody); it strikes me as insanity to not pay for the peace of mind that comes with "a human you can call up and say 'hey, why can't I get into my email' or 'hey, fix this please"

Versus what SO MANY PEOPLE use, which is "It's possible that your email will be removed from you entirely and you will have recourse because no one has a contract with you to fix it."

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

#156

Post by feanaro »

Retric wrote: post #139
jacquesm wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never done any of that.

I don’t mean that’s the only way to trip up, there are a lot of unspoken self hosing email rules. Don’t use public data centers, don’t send news letters etc.

My email server is only used as a personal server for a few select friends and family. They absolutely do not send and have never sent anything that could remotely be considered spam. Everything in our setup is picture perfect (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, PTR records, etc). We still can't get email onto Microsoft's servers without it being marked as spam.

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

#157

Post by LinuxBender »

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?

Maybe its just a matter of time for some. For me personally, I could not possibly care less if all the free mail providers blocked me some day. If something is important I can call people and tell them to go to https://mydomain.tld/theirName/ to grab files. I have used this method with non technical people including lawyers without issue. They prefer of course to use their own secure portals. I do acknowledge that running my own mail server may get more expensive with time as I may have to use providers that and more vigilant about keeping abusers off their network.

As for web servers why would I not be able to run my own servers? I can rent VM's, physical servers, racks, cages.

I am just speaking for myself but I will never give in to the bully anti-competitive behavior of the likes of Google and as for ISP's I will not use one that blocks ports or protocols. If there is any blocking to be done it must be done by me. I would never fund an ISP that uses CG-NAT or rate limits something by protocol or port. I realize some people have limited options but at least in terms of blocking and rate limiting, those ISP's are shooting themselves in the feet given that providers like Starlink and various 5G providers will be more common place soon.

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

#158

Post by ToddWBurgess »

jacquesm wrote: post #94
ToddWBurgess wrote: post #47

I think I am showing my age when I say, I remember when Linux by default came with sendmail enabled by default. You could use your Linux box to send e-mail anywhere without it getting caught up in spam filters. Fun times.

Personally, I'd prefer to have to deal with the spam than to have to deal with the duopoly in email that we have today.

I think you misunderstood. If you fire up a mail server on your Linux box today and try using it for mail the big mail servers are sending your mail to spam due to a bunch of spam rules. These days, you need an organization with a known reputation for sending good e-mail to handle your e-mail so you don't end up in a spam folder. It's how the big players stay big.

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

#160

Post by 0x0 »

ssl232 wrote: post #103
0x0 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to deliver email to other domains then you need to connect to port 25 on the destination domain MX server. As far as I know, best practice for the other ports (465, 587) is to require authentication and to reject anonymous submissions.

Port 25 is only required if the destination doesn't support TLS, I think. I've not opened port 25 outgoing on my server and I've had zero issues delivering sent mail to other servers for maybe 5 years. I think OP might have meant " receiving on port 25 is getting difficult" rather than sending. The spec requires servers to support unencrypted deliveries over port 25, even though almost all servers use TLS these days.

Even with TLS, that is usually handled by issuing STARTTLS on TCP port 25. I can't find anything in the RFCs mentioning server-to-server smtp delivery happening on anything but port 25? Do you have a reference for that? In fact, even the MX for google domains (aspmx.l.google.com) does not listen on TCP port 465 or 587, only 25.
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