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Helm: Personal Email Server

thehelm.com

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Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#461

Post by gsreenivas »

bootsz wrote: post #310
wpietri wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as somebody who has run their own mail server for years, #1 is a huge concern. It has been a real struggle for me despite having a server I own in a rack with net-neighbors I know. Another big one for me is the failure modes. What do I do when my home connection is down? How about when my connection is down and I'm traveling? What happens when the hardware fails? How about when the hardware fails 5 years from n…

> Another big one for me is the failure modes. What do I do when my home connection is down? How about when my connection is down and I'm traveling? What happens when the hardware fails? How about when the hardware fails 5 years from now? This is the big obstacle preventing me (and I assume others) from moving away from cloud. Cloud services just work , everywhere, all the time (effectively). I'd love to get the priv…

Hey bootsz, when your connection is down, you'll still have a local cache of your messages, contacts and calendar events. Email has retry built in and sending servers typically retry for at least 48-72 hours. The hardware has no moving parts so it should last for a long time, but when there is an inevitable failure, there are encrypted backups that can be downloaded to a replacement device and decrypted using keys only you have access to.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#462

Post by bigiain »

gsreenivas wrote: post #82
nickdandakis wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that Amazon is portrayed as the "massive corporate server" provider that stores your email "outside your home" on your homepage, yet you use AWS EC2 instances to pipe email traffic to/from Helm. I understand that it's just an encrypted VPN connection, and are not actually storing email on the EC2 instances. But is there any way for your customers to ensure that? Can your customers shell into the Helm…

We will be making public the configuration for these instances as part of what we publish in open source. We haven't considered allowing customers remote access to the gateway but we will based on your suggestion. Thanks!

If you _do_ "consider it", I hope you discard it as an awful idea pretty much immediately.

I'd suggest allowing customers who're concerned to run their own instances with your code on it (perhaps a Docker image?) - but giving random customers shell access to gateways you're responsible for (at least to Amazon) - would be insane...

Signal/WhisperSystems are doing some interesting work on how to prove the code running on their servers is identical to their published and auditable code - might be worth checking that out (for a post MVP roadmap idea).

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#463

Post by gsreenivas »

balladeer wrote: post #331
gsreenivas wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey paraditedc - thanks for your feedback. We will be launching a developer program next year. We are very interested in a community of people like you hacking on Helm to build new services/features.

Related feedback, you might to launch it well before the year 1st subscription year ends, otherwise customers who bought the setup assuming they won't opt for subscription and would still be able to use the device will left with no option for possibly a long time.

Thanks balladeer - we will definitely be launching the developer program in less than one year from now.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#466

Post by wmf »

bostonvaulter2 wrote: post #411
cwyers wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it bothers me when someone sells a "secure" product where the security measures are unrelated to the threat model. The Helm server is connected to the open Internet, which means that physical possession of the Helm server is not the only or even main thing necessary to secure it from compromise. Because of how it works, the server still has a dependency on cloud providers -- you need cloud backups and the pub…

How would you realistically completely remove the need for the relay server while still allowing the customer to run the server on a typical home internet connection?

Flip it around: don't run the server on a typical home internet connection but instead run it in a data center.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#467

Post by amelius »

salimmadjd wrote: post #293
garry wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the first and biggest investor in Helm and I'm on the board. I created email-based Posterous previously (YC funded) and was a YC partner for 5 years. I funded this team because they're high integrity software engineers first, and we built this out of need— a company like this needs to exist because for this to work, you need both great user experience as well as great software. Helm actually solves this exactly -…

> I funded this team because they're high integrity software engineers first, and we built this out of need I looked for the founders bio, a company contact info. There is nothing on their site. All I saw was a letter in the "About" section by the founder. You might have gotten to know these guys after various meetings and due diligence process. There is nothing on their website that sells me on trusting them or the…

How would material on a website provide trust, without a means to verify that information?

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#468

Post by johntash »

ryan-c wrote: post #452
newman314 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this page ( https://thehelm.com/pages/technology ), the following is logged. * Name, address, payment information, domain, DNS records * Device diagnostics (such as temperature), software versions, enabled services, connection status, connection type, serial number * Anything related to customer support, including information customers provide So plenty of information to uniquely identify a system. The l…

I don't see what the issue with uniquely identifying a system is. The main metadata of concern is what other mail servers are being interacted with.

If everything has to go through their relay, they can pretty easily see what mail servers are being interacted with.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#469

Post by tracker1 »

Don't most home ISPs block inbound server ports? I know Cox in particular does, as well as a few others. I have a business account for this reason that I pay a bit more (better support response too), but not sure if this is something a lot of people can even use without a backing service.

Cool idea though.

As an aside, any suggestions on easy to install/configure/update mail in a box + letsencrypt options? Thinking of throwing something on an rPI for similar chores.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#470

Post by newman314 »

johntash wrote: post #468
ryan-c wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see what the issue with uniquely identifying a system is. The main metadata of concern is what other mail servers are being interacted with.

If everything has to go through their relay, they can pretty easily see what mail servers are being interacted with.

Thanks.

Please see my other questions here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18243685

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