Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 150 posts

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#31

Post by robomartin »

This is neat. I've been running my own email forever and appreciate the difficulty involved.

I do have a question:

Does hosting your own email truly isolate you from government surveillance?

If a million people use this to host their own email on AWS, what's to keep the NSA from ordering Amazon to tap into your data?

You almost have to host it on your own hardware in the garage in order to add a significant layer of isolation. Even with that in place there are ways to access your communications through your ISP. Harder, not impossible.

What's reality?

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#32

Post by peterwaller »

It does greylisting by default. Greylisting is awesome at cutting down spam, but we recently noticed that it was preventing a major mail provider from getting through, among others, because it seems that this major provider doesn't use the same IP twice (at least sometimes).

If ignoring email coming from a major provider isn't an option (it isn't.), then what are your options?

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#33

Post by coherentpony »

Why has nobody just made a Docker image that anyone can download and use for free? Or even just a Dockerfile. That way it's a text file and people can contribute and improve the setup.

Just my two cents.

Edit: Looks like my idea is far from originalhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7634677 >

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#34

Post by mike-cardwell »

chrissnell wrote: post #23

Be aware: Rackspace (and surely many other cloud server providers) intentionally submit their IP blocks to DNS blacklists to dissuade spammers from using their hosts to send/relay mail. I'm not sure if the other big players do this but it wouldn't surprise me. Same goes for most consumer-class cable modem ISPs.

Do you have any evidence for this? It seems unlikely to me...

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#35

Post by xyzzy123 »

This is cool, but it doesn't actually help you with mass surveillance unless the other side of your conversation is doing that too. What point running your own email server if your friend is on hotmail?

Also, even if you both run your own MTAs STARTTLS does not help much except to reduce the scope of the passive-only surveillance dragnet, because the configuration does not require signed certificates.

Finally, if both parties are technical enough to run their own email servers, um, why not just use GPG?

From a technical point of view, I put this squarely in "fun, but a boondoggle" territory.

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#36

Post by smacktoward »

robomartin wrote: post #31

This is neat. I've been running my own email forever and appreciate the difficulty involved. I do have a question: Does hosting your own email truly isolate you from government surveillance? If a million people use this to host their own email on AWS, what's to keep the NSA from ordering Amazon to tap into your data? You almost have to host it on your own hardware in the garage in order to add a significant layer of…

> Does hosting your own email truly isolate you from government surveillance?

Not by itself, no; the government can still get to you by getting access to the machine you host it on, or the switch the mail flows through on its way in and out from the outside world. Hosting your own just reduces the number of third parties the government can try to shake down to get access to your data.

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#37

Post by jbverschoor »

chrissnell wrote: post #23

Be aware: Rackspace (and surely many other cloud server providers) intentionally submit their IP blocks to DNS blacklists to dissuade spammers from using their hosts to send/relay mail. I'm not sure if the other big players do this but it wouldn't surprise me. Same goes for most consumer-class cable modem ISPs.

Really?

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#38

Post by radq »

fideloper wrote: post #13
sz4kerto wrote: post #3

A Docker image would be brilliant.

Sounds like its a little more than running the setup script, as you need to choose a hostname and then setup Reverse DNS. That could make a docker instance harder to create if there's customization needed. The irony of Docker IMHO so far is that it almost makes installation that needs configuring with user-specific values harder, unless they know how to build docker instances themselves.

Can't say I agree, for example Discourse's Docker setup is pretty easy and installing a Discourse forum does involve specifying a number of variables.

https://github.com/discourse/discourse_docker

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#40

Post by miles_matthias »

This is nice if your main goal is to take privacy back. For me, Gmail is not only free, but provides great mobile apps and email innovation like filtering, search, and a tabbed inbox.

In short, Gmail provides more value to me than being a simple SMTP server, so I'm willing to pay with my advertising eyes.

Post reply on HN