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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

#491

Post by derekzhouzhen »

As someone who run my own email server, I obviously disagree. Three things come to my mind:

First, SPAM filter is way overrated. I have next to zero SPAM filter, and am doing just fine. Yes, I got lots of SPAMs, but the volume of real SPAMs is dwarfed by the volume of ads that would pass through SPAM filters anyway, so why bother.

Second, yes, open source webmail is lacking, that's why I wrote mine: https://github.com/derek-zhou/liv

Lastly, the biggest pain I have is sending email to big providers such as gmail. I have everything setup correctly, DMARC, SPF, you name it. And my server is not on any block list that I can find, and yet they put my emails in the SPAM folder from time to time. In the name of fighting SPAM, they are sabotaging the original internet experience for everyone.

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

#492

Post by zzless »

jodrellblank wrote: post #258
zzless wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I mention in my post, this is the setting our admins chose so I do not blame MS for this (they support both, I know). Another setting they chose is to delete emails over six months of age and there is nothing I can do about it either. The search and the interface are entirely the fault of MS as are the lack of more subtle features such as mass emails (which I have to use often while teaching online).

I read as "(No IMAP or POP) and (No forwarding which is University policy)". Mass emails via distribution lists are a thing - https://www.wisestamp.com/blog/managing-distribution-lists-i... As is sharing links to OneDrive content with a password on it: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/share-onedrive-fi... (" Set password: lets you set a password to access the file. When a user clicks the link, they will be…

Thank you for the links but just to clarify: I have to send each student a random individual password (so that they can login to set up their test taking software). The password is currently generated by a script that then proceeds to email it to each student. Sometimes I have to send individualized assignments (also randomly generated by computer algebra software). My personal email server makes it straightforward but I do not see how it is possible with MS. I guess a cleverly written IMAP client can do that for me but I cannot use IMAP, alas. The university policy is basically 'disable everything that can make using outlook bearable' (this last sentence should compensate for the ambiguous grammar you pointed out :)

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

#493

Post by tvararu »

hda2 wrote: post #451
scoot wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since from your comment she appears to be in the UK, GDPR right of access still applies. She can get a copy of the data, even if not access to the account.

Your comment raises an interesting point: If I, a non-EU citizen who doesn't live in the EU, get locked out of my gmail account, would traveling to the EU and invoking GDPR be a viable way for me to force google to hand over my emails? If yes, then I sense business potential. I for one would be willing to pay a lot of money to access my inbox.

I recall reading that it's 6 days of living in the EU until it "kicks in." I don't have a source or that and can't seem to find one, so take it with a pinch of salt.

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

#494

Post by joshdata »

dqv wrote: post #406
joshdata wrote: post #252

The comments all seem to be from people who think making an artisanal choice is a bad thing. There should be more art, experimentation, and expression in computing. If we've outgrown running our own mail servers as a practical choice, because there are now more good options, and we can enjoy running a mail server as a more humanly choice, that's a good thing. Not much has actually changed about the complexity of runn…

Hey! Thank you so much for MIAB. I've been using it for personal and business email since May of 2016. It has been an absolute joy to use and administer. I am truly grateful.

Thanks!

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

#495

Post by joshdata »

sascha_sl wrote: post #382
joshdata wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ahha! Glad to hear.

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

#496

Post by vineyardmike »

pyrale wrote: post #122

I would really say that "running your own email" is a set of things that can be done independently: - Getting your own domain and using a provider such as fastmail or proton is a first step that gives you lots of security fom arbitrary. Because you own the doorstep, you can change provider without having to inform all your contacts of the move. You're also more secure from unilateral moves from your provider. -Hostin…

Great write up!

I’ve long been interested in self hosting, but constantly tweaking and never got #3 stable. After iCloud made it easy to do #1, I pushed my parents into using it and gave them my domain (@lastname). Now I just share it too, since it’s just too easy.

I encourage everyone who wants to change to something they control, or uses a paid iCloud tier to set up their own vanity domain for iCloud. It’s so easy and lets you own the identity, which is a critical part and portable. Not trying to shill anything, but it took 10 minutes and is offered by apple, so every not tech-savy person has heard of and trusts them, so it’s easier to convince others.

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

#497

Post by vineyardmike »

patja wrote: post #250
pyrale wrote: post #122

I would really say that "running your own email" is a set of things that can be done independently: - Getting your own domain and using a provider such as fastmail or proton is a first step that gives you lots of security fom arbitrary. Because you own the doorstep, you can change provider without having to inform all your contacts of the move. You're also more secure from unilateral moves from your provider. -Hostin…

You can have the best of both worlds with self-hosting received mail and achieving good deliverability by using a service such as Amazon SES. SES will probably cost you less than $10 a year for personal email sending volumes. I use it for my business and it is less than $15/yr. Rarely get a bill for more than $1. They hold you accountable for any abuse/complaints, which is a good thing.

How do you use SES for this? It seems to only allow receipt of email conveniently. Sending seems to require using an api which is not something most people want to do to email others.

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

#499

Post by iggldiggl »

patja wrote: post #250
pyrale wrote: post #122

I would really say that "running your own email" is a set of things that can be done independently: - Getting your own domain and using a provider such as fastmail or proton is a first step that gives you lots of security fom arbitrary. Because you own the doorstep, you can change provider without having to inform all your contacts of the move. You're also more secure from unilateral moves from your provider. -Hostin…

You can have the best of both worlds with self-hosting received mail and achieving good deliverability by using a service such as Amazon SES. SES will probably cost you less than $10 a year for personal email sending volumes. I use it for my business and it is less than $15/yr. Rarely get a bill for more than $1. They hold you accountable for any abuse/complaints, which is a good thing.

For a private mail server operator, Amazon SES is somewhat annoying because if your mail server is down, they're only keeping mails in the delivery queue for something like eight hours or so, which is way too short if you're not a big provider who can commit to round-the-clock support for the mail server.

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

#500

Post by pyrale »

BbzzbB wrote: post #468
pyrale wrote: post #122

I would really say that "running your own email" is a set of things that can be done independently: - Getting your own domain and using a provider such as fastmail or proton is a first step that gives you lots of security fom arbitrary. Because you own the doorstep, you can change provider without having to inform all your contacts of the move. You're also more secure from unilateral moves from your provider. -Hostin…

Might be a silly question, I own a domain that is my first initial + last name dot dev for my portfolio. What's a decent, or usual, prefix to use with such a domain as a personal email for job applications? Bonus point if it is English-French bilingual. contact@ sounds off, like I'm a corporation. email@ or mail@ I kind of like, but I'm afraid it sounds "confusing" (is that in my head?). application@ or job@ is not b…

hello@ is pretty popular.

But when I give the mail directly to a given company, I use companyname@mydomain.com. That lets me track how I'm contacted, and sometimes it starts interesting conversations.

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