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Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

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Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#381

Post by avsteele »

coffeecat wrote: post #281
tjoff wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, on the flip side unless you constantly check your spam folder (which pretty much completely defeats the purpose of a spam filter) you most definitely have lost important mails thanks to gmail. I just don't see what people see in gmail part from the google brand - which surely isn't a good thing anymore.

I'm not here to be a Google apologist, but in the 10 or more years that I've used gmail, I don't think I've ever had an important email go to spam.

Google workspace sends yes/no meeting confirmations that you make in workspace, to people within your own organization, to spam unless you specifically make a rule to allow them.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#382

Post by sascha_sl »

joshdata wrote: post #292
sascha_sl wrote: post #23

Also, a lot of software in the field has never made sense to me. I know what the parts do, but I couldn't tell you how to assemble it all. It all seems very old and seperate software more for historical reasons than anything else. I ran mailinabox for a year or two, but eventually I just didn't want to maintain a piece of software I didn't understand where the documentation seemed actively hostile and presumptuous ab…

> I ran mailinabox for a year or two ... the documentation seemed actively hostile Maintainer of Mail-in-a-Box here. I'm sorry you had that experience. Definitely was not the intention of the project to be hostile (but I can see how it might come off that way).

Hi Josh. I should've specified I meant the postfix documentation here. MiaB was wonderful, save for maybe skipping one Ubuntu LTS and leaving not quite a lot of time to migrate.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#383

Post by hackerfromthefu »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #249
vaylian wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. But it is still one person/company less that reads your e-mail, if you and your correspondent used different e-mail providers previously. There are also correspondences where you are only the receiver. For example, when you order things online. Gmail doesn't need to know what you are shopping for.

Unfortunately, they can still close the loop on purchase history and ad impressions through indirect, lazy association. It's a very, very impressive edifice that's been created for identifying and tracking pretty much everybody irrespective of their direct, immediate interaction with the entity doing the tracking. I honestly think it's kind of funny that such a potentially insidious system was manifest for something…

Yes, quite the trojan horse.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#384

Post by zbuf »

pseudalopex wrote: post #285
zbuf wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This matches my exprience. I switched recently after 10+ years, and was cautious that this might be a problem but it hasn't been at all. I think it has more to do with the choice of ISP.

I think they meant servers with no reputation are punished. Other comments said so at least. What ISP should someone choose?

Interesting, I misinterpreted what was being said!

I'm doubtful a default block would work, as that would even penalise the 'big boys' of email when they make basic network changes and piss off existing customers of both sender and receiver... Its easier and logical to conclude something without reputation yet is therefore sending too few mails to be useful to a spammer.

I've had good experiences with smaller ISPs (currently Mythic Beasts). In contrast, OVH was a poor experience.

I find that reputation (beyond the known "block-lists") appears more likely being tracked for the whole AS number, therefore a lot more to do with your "neighbours" than anything else.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#385

Post by z0f »

gruez wrote: post #358
dmw_ng wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sending your mail yourself is the real hard part It's possible to punt on this by using SES for outbound, while continuing to handle inbound a different way. Obviously SES doesn't count as fully self-hosted, but it does solve (or at least significantly ameliorate -- zero issues here) the reputation problem

>It's possible to punt on this by using SES for outbound How does this work? Do you just sign up for aws, then set your outbound SMTP to whatever SES provides?

Yep, you just configure your outbound SMTP server to be the SES credentials and adjust your SPF/DKIM records.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#386

Post by Gigachad »

rmdes wrote: post #6

Someone should try "artisanal email server" using cloudron or yunohost ! the bigger problem is that "authoritative" email monopolies such as Gmail, 365 and the other big ones arbitrarily define and impose what is a legit email server or not and even with better score than gmail an "artisanal" email server can suffer from being classified into spam by the big tech players just because they can and will do anything to…

>just because they can and will do anything to maintain their monopoly.

This is a popular opinion on HN but it doesn't seem at all inline with reality. Email isn't exactly a real money maker for anyone. And the amount of email spam and abuse is immense. Filtering out most unknown providers is unfortunately extremely effective. Almost all spam wiped out with a simple check.

Maybe the ideal solution would be to let you link your custom email domain with a google account so you can have your google account vouch for the legitimacy of your custom domain. But even then, some of the time your email server actually is just blasting out spam without you knowing it.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#387

Post by kiwijamo »

dqv wrote: post #327
michaelt wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is delivery problems are almost undetectable. If I send an email to a corporation’s customer support, or to a distant relation, or to an open source mailing list, and I don’t get a reply, it could be a delivery problem - or it could just be that they didn’t decide to reply.

For corporate support, that’s totally on them. Checking the spam folder is customer support. The “oh sorry your email went to spam!” is one of the few times I express dissatisfaction to a company. It’s not my responsibility to make sure my email doesn’t go to their spam folder. Not when I’ve taken all the right steps to make sure my emails are not marked as spam. If you have customers, you have to check your spam fol…

You seem to not realize many email providers just drop emails (often after accepting it) instead of putting it in spam folders. So even your suggestion is of no help in that situation.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#388

Post by FemmeAndroid »

iamtheworstdev wrote: post #379
stiray wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet was meant to be decentralized. Lets leave it this way. I am running my server for 15 years and couldn't be more happy with "artisan" infrastructure. I don't want or use webmail (sluggish), I don't want others fingerpoking my emails, I don't want various compulsory registration systems (like requiring my phone number out of """security""" reasons like google), giving others the ability to kill my account and…

> And you would be surprised, how many sites sell email addresses to others, and I know it as every one gets its own email address. So much this. I've actually contacted companies to tell them they've been compromised because I started getting phishing emails. I quit after the third time of reporting it and being told "we haven't been hacked, someone in your friends group has and you just can't read email headers"..…

It's funny to hear this experience. I've been doing this consistently for about 5 years now and have noticed 2 instances where this occurred, and in both there were prior disclosures about a security failure.

I tend to sign up for a lot of things (I'm seeing over 150 unique email addresses I receive emails from using this scheme), but I guess I'm just getting lucky.

Also, just out of curiosity, where does one sell email addresses, and how much are they worth? I take signups on a few websites, and I'd never sell my users' email, but I'm just curious to learn more.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#389

Post by OvidNaso »

Gigachad wrote: post #386
rmdes wrote: post #6

Someone should try "artisanal email server" using cloudron or yunohost ! the bigger problem is that "authoritative" email monopolies such as Gmail, 365 and the other big ones arbitrarily define and impose what is a legit email server or not and even with better score than gmail an "artisanal" email server can suffer from being classified into spam by the big tech players just because they can and will do anything to…

>just because they can and will do anything to maintain their monopoly. This is a popular opinion on HN but it doesn't seem at all inline with reality. Email isn't exactly a real money maker for anyone. And the amount of email spam and abuse is immense. Filtering out most unknown providers is unfortunately extremely effective. Almost all spam wiped out with a simple check. Maybe the ideal solution would be to let you…

Email itself maybe is not a money maker, but my company just went to 365 and 90% of the justification to management is "were switching email providers". Microsoft and Google's small business offerings are inextricably dependent on email first.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#390

Post by EvanAnderson »

iamtheworstdev wrote: post #379
stiray wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet was meant to be decentralized. Lets leave it this way. I am running my server for 15 years and couldn't be more happy with "artisan" infrastructure. I don't want or use webmail (sluggish), I don't want others fingerpoking my emails, I don't want various compulsory registration systems (like requiring my phone number out of """security""" reasons like google), giving others the ability to kill my account and…

> And you would be surprised, how many sites sell email addresses to others, and I know it as every one gets its own email address. So much this. I've actually contacted companies to tell them they've been compromised because I started getting phishing emails. I quit after the third time of reporting it and being told "we haven't been hacked, someone in your friends group has and you just can't read email headers"..…

I've discovered two previously unknown data breaches this way. I was gratified when the operators of the sites thanked me for reporting it. Most times, though, I get the treatment you're describing.
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