Live data from Hacker News

After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

cfenollosa.com

531–540 of 744 posts

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#531
post #80

Sending email out is a royal pain. Trying to deal with a Microsoft ban on my IP even though it’s sparkling clean for several years. DKIM, DMARC, SPF etc all ser up, reverse dns, you name it. Looks like Linode is being blocked as a whole pretty much? Hate the level of centralization, particularly since there’s still a shit ton of spam still around. Sorry for the rant. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions…

Wouldn't surprise me if Linode were entirely blocked. Also anything in M247 Ltd's ASN. They host a lot of VPN endpoints, including Mullvad's. Step 1, I'd move off Linode. Find a local DC or business you can support by hosting a VPS or dedi box with them. LowEndBox might be an interesting place to search but avoid anything too famous. Step 2, join this https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/pm/services... .…

"Wouldn't surprise me if Linode were entirely blocked."

I'd be very surprised. I hosted email on Linode for years without issue.

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#532
post #71

I'm on 12 years of self hosting email and counting. Once every so often, I do end up being blocked, usually by Outlook and once by Yahoo. I'm in their 'sender program' and they still don't actually bother to contact postmaster@, but a few emails is usually enough to unblock the block within 24h. Agree with a sibling comment that many major providers fail to operate the SPF/DKIM/DMARC tools they insist you do. Each to…

Would using a VPS with a static IP not work? Also does it help to use Google/Azure to host with regard to IP reputation with Gmail or Outlook?

Yes, as long as the IP doesn't already have some reputation attached to it. Here's a list of resources: https://sendgrid.com/blog/5-ways-check-sending-reputation/

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#533
post #111

Sending email out is a royal pain. Trying to deal with a Microsoft ban on my IP even though it’s sparkling clean for several years. DKIM, DMARC, SPF etc all ser up, reverse dns, you name it. Looks like Linode is being blocked as a whole pretty much? Hate the level of centralization, particularly since there’s still a shit ton of spam still around. Sorry for the rant. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions…

> Trying to deal with a Microsoft ban on my IP https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/snds/index....

Wow that is a wonderful link, they really seem to be improving on interacting with the public in these matters.

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#535
post #21

The sweet spot for having control over your email while simultaneously minimizing unforseen headaches is to simply own your domain name and point the MX record to whatever hosting provider you want instead of self-hosting a server at home. Same philosophy for exposing a your personal blog of html files or content like mp4 videos. The sweet spot is to focus on buying a domain name you control. Then let Amazon S3, or C…

It’s a misnomer to say you can “own” a domain name. You cannot. The better word would be “rent”. Because of that you should think about what could happen if your domain name registration lapses and someone else registers it.

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#536
post #485

The address 929@homeaffairs.gov.au, which must be used by Australian permanent residents to update their personal details, refuses to accept email messages unless they are from big tech. Shame on you, Australian Department of Home Affairs. And shame on Telstra, which provides the service. --- Remote-MTA: dns; dibp-ibmail2.msng.telstra.com.au Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 554-mx.msng.telstra.com.au 554 Your access to this ma…

> The address 929@homeaffairs.gov.au, which must be used by Australian permanent residents to update their personal details You update personal details with the government via email? That's interesting. I would have assumed they would use at least a secure web form.

929 is the form. The email address is for completed copies of the form.

Permanent residents are a class of non citizens who have the right to permanently reside in Australia. Most cannot vote.

All of it can be done online through their portal. The Australian government spies on everyone anyway so using the portal presents no increased attack surface for anyone who would care.

Really it's there as a legacy technology. Most people under 35 would certainly use a portal. Probably most of them over 35 as well at this point.

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#537
post #485

The address 929@homeaffairs.gov.au, which must be used by Australian permanent residents to update their personal details, refuses to accept email messages unless they are from big tech. Shame on you, Australian Department of Home Affairs. And shame on Telstra, which provides the service. --- Remote-MTA: dns; dibp-ibmail2.msng.telstra.com.au Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 554-mx.msng.telstra.com.au 554 Your access to this ma…

> The address 929@homeaffairs.gov.au, which must be used by Australian permanent residents to update their personal details You update personal details with the government via email? That's interesting. I would have assumed they would use at least a secure web form.

[deleted]

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#538
post #485

The address 929@homeaffairs.gov.au, which must be used by Australian permanent residents to update their personal details, refuses to accept email messages unless they are from big tech. Shame on you, Australian Department of Home Affairs. And shame on Telstra, which provides the service. --- Remote-MTA: dns; dibp-ibmail2.msng.telstra.com.au Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 554-mx.msng.telstra.com.au 554 Your access to this ma…

> The address 929@homeaffairs.gov.au, which must be used by Australian permanent residents to update their personal details You update personal details with the government via email? That's interesting. I would have assumed they would use at least a secure web form.

[deleted]

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#539
post #250

I've been hosting my mail for 20+ years now, with minor issues. I guess I've been lucky. Reading the comments here makes me incredibly sad. Every answer that tells me to use a provider misses the point. The Internet was created so that there could be many independent nodes, not so that everybody has to rely on one of several blessed providers. I should be able to run my own E-mail. The real problem is lack of incenti…

> The real problem is lack of incentives. The big corps do not care about e-mail. It doesn't make money and isn't easily controllable. You can't turn it into a walled garden and lock users in. So, it gets minimal attention, and only defensive measures are developed.

Is this true? Even for consumer stuff, the only Google product besides search that seems widely popular is Gmail.

For enterprise, Microsoft is pulling in billions from office products. Without digging into their statements I know from my own experience that enterprise email services constitute a core piece of this.

For consumers, switching costs are low (mostly just inconvenient to go through all of your accounts) but not relative to the drawbacks of using corporate email providers which is zero unless you value your privacy.

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#540
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But they are not calling for a completely open system. I like this proposal from the author. > Change blacklisting protocols so they are not permanent and use an exponential cooldown penalty. After spam is detected from an IP, it should be banned for, say, ten minutes. Then, a day. A week. A month, and so on. This discourages spammers from reusing IPs after the ban is lifted and will allow the IP pool to be cle…

> I don't mind doing some paperwork or paying a fee to prove I'm legit. Then how about this: The big email companies all declare one day that any newly registered domain (with an MX record) needs to post a bond for good behaviour in escrow somewhere. If any of them find the domain being used to send spam, they can slash the bond (sending it to some charity or something). This has the advantage that it doesn't affect…

You're describing one of the solutions made by Ironport, "Bonded Sender". Their solutions were sold to Return Path and Cisco later bought them out, presumably with the bonded sended solution still belonging to Return Path? [1,2]

I've never seen discussion of this in the mainstream though... so I'm not sure if it's actually being used or just shelved.

At this point, I think any proprietary they've created is game for usage. But it's very hard to get multiple large organizations to adopt this.

I definitely think it's a solution.

[1] https://archive.ph/CH98s [2] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2548788/cisco-to-acqui...

Post reply on HN