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

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

#31

Post by katbyte »

b0afc375b5 wrote: post #15
okasaki wrote: post #2

All that "security" just to fight spam. IIRC it was estimated that globally spammers make $300M per year from their spam. It doesn't seem like much. Somebody joked that it would be better if we just paid them that much to do nothing.

I wonder what the underlying problem is. Gabe Newell once said that "Piracy is not a pricing issue. It's a service issue". I believe this has been proven by netflix/spotify as well. Is spam just a symptom of a much deeper problem? If so what is it? Or is it naive to think of spam this way?

I think you can exclude Netflix from that list. Streaming services have fractured into a dozen different ones so piracy has come back.

Still applies to games/music and probably audio books.

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

#32

Post by dogleash »

b0afc375b5 wrote: post #15
okasaki wrote: post #2

All that "security" just to fight spam. IIRC it was estimated that globally spammers make $300M per year from their spam. It doesn't seem like much. Somebody joked that it would be better if we just paid them that much to do nothing.

I wonder what the underlying problem is. Gabe Newell once said that "Piracy is not a pricing issue. It's a service issue". I believe this has been proven by netflix/spotify as well. Is spam just a symptom of a much deeper problem? If so what is it? Or is it naive to think of spam this way?

Steam and Netflix made it possible for people to play/watch media more easily than going to the pirate bay.

What are spammers trying to accomplish, that a better product would prevent them from using email (that isn't just them shitting up the other service the way they shit up email)?

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

#33

Post by john_minsk »

cm2187 wrote: post #17
greatjack613 wrote: post #10

I have had the exact opposite experience, I used mail in a box and set it up on digital ocean on a 5$ droplet. Have not had any spam or blacklisting issues and it was super easy to setup.

I am somewhere in the middle. Have been running my personal mail server for 15y, it mostly works but my emails do get often flagged as spam by the major providers (but not deleted). Though those very same providers are themselves a major source of the spam I receive. Do as I say, not as I do. The nice thing if you control your domain is to be able to create unique email aliases, which is a way to cut spam to zero. A…

Wanted to get my own email specifically for this. Is it possible on one of the serviced emails?

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

#35

Post by ilovecaching »

jasode wrote: 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…

This is what I do. The downside is that a lot of email providers make it really difficult to set up 3rd party clients outside of their own clients. I've struggled to get mutt to work with a lot of email providers because they use their own auth mechanisms.

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

#36

Post by rabite »

> Blacklists should not include whole IP blocks. I am not responsible for what my IP neighbor is doing with their server.

This is obviously laughably naive and creates infinite sources of spam.

Before doing a proposal on a core Internet technology you should be required to be on the other side for a while. Do anti-spam at a large retail e-mail service provider for a year and then you can understand the problem space.

You might not be responsible for what your neighbor is doing with their server, but the ESP is responsible for filtering it. The idea that they need to treat each and every comcast IP with equal weight is nuts. IP reputation is the single most valuable tool in the industry; the largest statistical predictor of whether or not an email is abusive.

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

#37

Post by colordrops »

jasode wrote: 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…

I agree with this assessment, and it's what I do. There is still the single point of failure of losing your domain due to a hostile registrar or mismanagement e.g. allowing registration to lapse.

Ideally there would be some a decentralized permanent domain registry keyed on certs (I know these exist but have not been adopted), or at least a fallback domain you could configure somehow in case you lost control of your main domain.

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

#38

Post by luckylion »

andruby wrote: post #26
b0afc375b5 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the underlying problem is. Gabe Newell once said that "Piracy is not a pricing issue. It's a service issue". I believe this has been proven by netflix/spotify as well. Is spam just a symptom of a much deeper problem? If so what is it? Or is it naive to think of spam this way?

I think it is different. With Piracy people want something (product/service/media). The quote from Gabe is about the fact that they are willing to pay for it, if it is convenient and affordable. Nobody wants spam or the things promoted in the spam. The companies want attention from the users. I think the better version is targeted ads on Facebook, etc. Maybe that’s the closest analogy to Gabe’s quote.

> Nobody wants spam or the things promoted in the spam.

Lots of people want Viagra without having to see a doctor. There definitely is a market for it, and now there are companies that do provide it, I wonder if this will cause spam to shift to other products.

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

#39

Post by noncoml »

Forget about self hosting. Even a custom domain is a pain sometimes.

According to a lot of web apps, my email is not valid and can’t use it.

Also I have been told by a customer support person that my email is not right as it has to end with gmail.com

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

#40

Post by colordrops »

ilovecaching wrote: post #35
jasode wrote: 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…

This is what I do. The downside is that a lot of email providers make it really difficult to set up 3rd party clients outside of their own clients. I've struggled to get mutt to work with a lot of email providers because they use their own auth mechanisms.

I'm pretty happy using protonmail bridge with local clients. It does take some effort to setup though.
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