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How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

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Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#221

Post by ryan-c »

old-gregg wrote: post #205
smolsky wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran my own mail server (a few VMs in the cloud) for about five years. It's fun as you have control over accounts, aliases, forwarding, sieve tricks as well as backups. It's good to know that your broker and doctor's mail is delivered directly to your server and not Google. It sucks ass when your mail does not get through as GMail/Hotmail rejects a connection from the IP address your cloud company allocated for you,…

Actually one fun way of doing it is to run your own email setup using one of the big ESPs as a "proxy". You can do it for both inbound and outbound. You can have a domain registered with Gmail or Rackspace Mail or whatever, and use the SMTP credentials they give you for outbound, while keeping MX records point to your own SMTP for inbound. Or you can let them process the inbound as well (fighting spam for you) and yo…

> Actually one fun way of doing it is to run your own email setup using one of the big ESPs as a "proxy".

I tried this with Mailgun, and it caused my mail to be marked as spam.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#222

Post by pyre »

korethr wrote: post #181
pyre wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this like saying: > "I've never personally experienced a BSOD in Windows ME, so obviously it's incredibly stable. Those other people are just doing something wrong."

Honestly, when Windows 9x would crash, it was because something was doing something wrong. Drivers and legacy mode programs written and running under the no-longer-true assumption that they're the only program running on the computer will absolutely wreck your day when they poke in places they don't belong and do things they shouldn't. And if you got rid of those misbehaving programs, Win9x got a lot more stable. I u…

I was commenting more on dismissing the issues of others because you have not personally experienced them. There could be numerous examples used in place of the BSOD.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#223

Post by Godel_unicode »

ryanlol wrote: post #195
andris9 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes it is, we have around 200k users and fighting with old leaked passwords is like a full time job. Very easy to abuse as well, the attackers can make low frequency requests from scattered IPs and thus are almost impoasible to prevent

I made a very specific claim which I can back up with actual data if necessary. I will make that claim even more specific: Less than 5% of the email:password combinations in the linkedin dump work today as email logins. “most” suggests a far higher success rate.

You added a predicate not present in the statement you replied to, "where mailprovider like LinkedIn_dump.mailprovider". Anecdotally, in authorized enterprise password audits I am frequently forced to remind people who were part of that breach that they need to change all instances of their compromised password, not just the one for the email they used in the breach. Maltego is a thing.

Also, with regard to your claim to have data about which passwords work. You should be aware that accessing someone's account with their username:password without permission (even a breached password) is likely illegal in the United States under the CFAA.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#224

Post by mozumder »

perlgod wrote: post #209
mozumder wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You use it with your home ISP on a static-IP address.

Any outgoing mail will almost certainly be spam-blocked if you send from a residential IP. Also, most ISPs block port 25.

Nope.

When you ask your ISP for a static-IP address, your service goes from Residential to a more expensive Business account, and they open up outgoing mail ports. (At least for Verizon FIOS that I'm on, pretty sure Comcast is same as well.)

Cloud IP addresses are probably more problematic for spam blocklists.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#226

Post by osrec »

The configuration of mail servers is so unbelievably grueling, it can almost reduce one to tears! I love having my email and data on my own server, but it is horrendously time consuming to get it up and running, and if something goes wrong, you could be looking at a weekend of work (often involving trial and error with poorly documented config formats). Sometimes I wish email could be replaced with something simpler but just as ubiquitous. Sigh

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#227

Post by digitalsin »

There's no reason to not at least run mail-in-a-box if you consider yourself a technical person but have limited time. It's absurdly easy to set up and the maintainers / contributors do an awesome job.

Running your primary email on these big hosting companies is taking your privacy and pissing it right down the drain.

It's really not that hard folks.

https://mailinabox.email/

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#228

Post by sliken »

lucb1e wrote: post #110
yosamino wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Postfix is not the best choice for novices, I'll give you that in general, mail servers are not for novices, and they have a huge array of configuration options, but Postfix is by a wide margin the best piece of software that I've come across the last couple of years, and I've been using it for a long time because of that. It's reliable, it works exactly as documented, it's up to date, it's documentation is excelle…

> mail servers are not for novices I invite you to look at hMailServer. I set this up when I had a reasonable clue about SMTP and only a vague understanding of POP3 or IMAP. Let alone how spam filters worked ("they look at words like viagra" was my understanding) or what mailing lists are. It's really a Windows-like utility in the sense of next-next-next-finish. By now I despise most Windows Server wizards for not be…

Postfix is popular, secure, flexible, well documented, and likely to be around in 10 years. The defaults are quite sane and it's battle tested on numerous large mail servers.

For a simple domain you only have to edit a few lines that numerous tutorials cover. Combining it with dovecot (similarly well designed, secure, popular, battle tested etc) makes for a robust setup.

Sure don't make the mistakes the OP made and allow relaying for the the entire internet. I can't imagine any sane tutorial has relaying enabled by default.

I've never heard of hMailServer, but hard to imagine it would be worth while and I wouldn't want to bet on it being around in 5-10 years. If editing a few config files and changing a few lines scares you then don't run a mail server. Otherwise pick something popular, well tested, and robust. Sure postfix+dovecot isn't the only solution, but I wouldn't pick something small/obscure/new either.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#229

Post by sliken »

Torgo wrote: post #7

I started running my own email server around 2014. I am using every mitigation I can find, but I still get an unending torrent of spam that slips through. If tweaking spam filters and deleting spam is your idea of fun, then run your own email server.

Install the current spamassassin and turn on greylisting should get rid of 99%.

Then I'd block the spam only domains like .click, .link, .party, .top, .webcam, .xyz, and .stream.

That should be enough to get you close to zero, sure having spamassin learn based on your Junk folder will help improve things.

I've run a mail server for 20+ years and never had a spam issue, periodically I do updates spam assassin of course.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#230

Post by pi-rat »

mrb wrote: post #121
wila wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most decent ISPs let you create email forwarders. This is exactly what I use when signing up for a new service. Quickly add a new forwarder and feed the service that email address instead of my normal address. When they turn out to be spammy, the forwarder gets removed.

Do you mean ESP or ISP? Relying on an ISP email forwarder doesn't work because if I move and cancel my service, I lose all these forwarders. What ESP do you recommend for unlimited (or large numbers of) aliases indistinguishable from individual email addresses (such as ycombinator4853@foo.com facebook843983@foo.com but not john+ycombinator@gmail.com john+facebook@gmail.com)? Edit: fastmail's standard $50/yr plan offe…

Combine aliases with fastmail’s subdomain addressing, and I seriously doubt you’ll run out of names any time soon :)
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