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

Post by boltzmann-brain » Mon, Sep 05, 2022, 7:20 AM UTC

laundermaf wrote: post #504

tsaixingwei wrote: post #491

I tried to operate my own email server as well on a VPS, and I have been thinking that the way to solve these problems is to solve the problem of spam itself. Detecting spam puts the costs on the email providers... when the costs should be born by spammers. Perhaps some sort of digital stamp (digital signatures similar to stamps on physical envelopes) for each email sent paid for with micropayments in a cryptocurrenc…

> Small cost per email like 0.01 cents that is trivial for legitimate senders but not for bulk-sending spammers Given how much is spent on ads, I’d say that an email is still worth more than that. So, what you get is spammers paying minuscole amount of money to skip the spam filter and killing the idea at the root. Or they can simply steal these credentials from one of the millions of hacked sites and cause additiona…

Post by prox » Mon, Sep 05, 2022, 7:22 AM UTC

r2_pilot wrote: post #412

chrismeller wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course whitelist is easier, but how valuable would your email be if you only allowed your friends to email you? Goodbye order confirmations, subscription reminders, recruiter emails, notifications…

Sounds like a dream, really. And you could always have it be user-driven action, like "Copy this line and paste it into your email provider's whitelist", framing it as a positive win for the user since they have total control over who is allowed to communicate with them.

Post by vinay_ys » Mon, Sep 05, 2022, 7:26 AM UTC

Godel_unicode wrote: post #582

jimmydorry wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow. I am pointing out that using the same kinds of lists that the big providers use will result in smaller providers being arbitrarily blocked with little recourse. Do you disagree with that assessment?

First, yes. They (the small providers) have recourse, it’s just annoying. They voluntarily signed up for that annoyance because of their ideology. But much more importantly, that question is orthogonal to my argument. Using blocklists is a good way to cut down on spam, the fact that it might block some trivial percentage of people who for ideological reasons might or might not be on those lists isn’t the receivers pr…

Post by 867-5309 » Mon, Sep 05, 2022, 7:29 AM UTC

zahllos wrote: 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…

Post by gwd » Mon, Sep 05, 2022, 7:33 AM UTC

kagronick wrote: post #472

jwr wrote: 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…

I think the problem was this guy was providing email accounts for other people. Other people who probably reused their passwords and had their email in the same DB in the apps they used. That DB was compromised. Hackers got an account to send spam. Then the domain was blacklisted. He alluded to this in > At some point your IP range is bound to be banned, either by one asshole IP neighbor sending spam, one of your use…