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1. It's a massive exaggeration that it's dangerous to run your own email server. Now, he doesn't explain why he thinks that it is, but I guess there would be tw

1. It's a massive exaggeration that it's dangerous to run your own email server. Now, he doesn't explain why he thinks that it is, but I guess there would be two major categories, both based on the assumption of vulnerabilities: (1) your server could be abused against others (yes, but so could your laptop or smartphone) or (2) your own emails could be at risk of being leaked (yes, but the solution to that obviously is not to directly give them to someone else instead). 2. None of that is actually solved by simply trusting someone else to run your email servers for you if you also can't judge whether they are doing it properly and, in particular, in your interest. 3. If you think that trusting someone else to run your email servers for you is an acceptable solution, that is functionally equivalent to trusting someone else to provide you with a software package to run on your email servers. Everything that someone else could do on an email server that they run for you, they could just as well package into, say, an install CD image, which you then could use to run your own functionally equivalent, hopefully well-configured and well-updated, mail server. So, I would think, this is at best an argument against putting together your own mail server from distro packages, and configuring everything yourself, maybe. Other than that, there is no fundamental reason why you would need to know email RFCs any more for running an email server than you need to know them for running an email client. In either case, knowing them can help you with figuring out some problems. But also, in either case, if the software is good, the programmers should have taken care of reading the RFCs for you, so you don't need to, for the most part.

ikeboy 10y ago
>Everything that someone else could do on an email server that they run for you, they could just as well package into, say, an install CD image, which you then could use to run your own functionally equivalent, hopefully well-configured and well-updated, mail server. Gmail won't give you their entire software stack (also good luck running it even if they did). Neither will any of the other big players.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
  Are you saying that gmail are the only ones who know how to run a mail server?
  - ivanca 10y ago
    You were claiming "they could just as well package into, say, an install CD image" which is likely not going to happen, so he was just giving an example. The perfect spam filter Gmail has its probably based on data and ML analysis, not a simple software you can put on a CD and install on some little server; so even if someone who works there wanted to help you they probably can't do it.
    - stonogo 10y ago
      GMail's "perfect spam filter" is so bad that it is the reason my institution moved away from Google services. It's also the main reason so many people consider it 'impossible' to host your own email. It's anything but perfect. It's a black box, with no user-serviceable parts inside. Completely useless for any organization with needs that deviate from Joe User.
      - newjersey 10y ago
        How would you implement a spam filter? You can sort of turn off spam filtering on incoming emails but I don't most people or organizations would want that. > Completely useless for any organization with needs that deviate from Joe User. Maybe but being slightly over aggressive means a world in terms of user happiness. Think about email before Gmail. How much junk did you see in your inbox? There is a lot LESS today. Joe User would be very happy if they dried to think about it for a second.
        zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
        > How would you implement a spam filter? What do you mean "implement"? You are aware that there exists free spam filtering software that you can install, like, say, spamassassin (which has been around longer than gmail)? > Maybe but being slightly over aggressive means a world in terms of user happiness. Dropping legitimate emails is good for user happiness? You have strange users. I imagine if the post office decided to throw away some letters "slighty over aggressive[ly]" ... there are people who would be happy if that happened? > Think about email before Gmail. How much junk did you see in your inbox? There is a lot LESS today. I see maybe one to three spam mails per day, with nearly zero false positives (maybe one per year). And that's without gmail. Obviously, I could reduce that to zero spam, at the cost of increased false positives, which is not a sensible option as far as I am concerned, deleting three mails per day isn't really all that much work.
sbierwagen 10y ago
Everything that someone else could do on an email server that they run for you, they could just as well package into, say, an install CD image, which you then could use to run your own functionally equivalent, hopefully well-configured and well-updated, mail server. https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/
AstralStorm 10y ago
The only remaining trouble is having to look up all those mail servers with improper DNS setup. No SPF, no DNSSEC, no keys.

ikeboy 10y ago

>Everything that someone else could do on an email server that they run for you, they could just as well package into, say, an install CD image, which you then could use to run your own functionally equivalent, hopefully well-configured and well-updated, mail server. Gmail won't give you their entire software stack (also good luck running it even if they did). Neither will any of the other big players.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
Are you saying that gmail are the only ones who know how to run a mail server?
- ivanca 10y ago
  You were claiming "they could just as well package into, say, an install CD image" which is likely not going to happen, so he was just giving an example. The perfect spam filter Gmail has its probably based on data and ML analysis, not a simple software you can put on a CD and install on some little server; so even if someone who works there wanted to help you they probably can't do it.
  - stonogo 10y ago
    GMail's "perfect spam filter" is so bad that it is the reason my institution moved away from Google services. It's also the main reason so many people consider it 'impossible' to host your own email. It's anything but perfect. It's a black box, with no user-serviceable parts inside. Completely useless for any organization with needs that deviate from Joe User.
    - newjersey 10y ago
      How would you implement a spam filter? You can sort of turn off spam filtering on incoming emails but I don't most people or organizations would want that. > Completely useless for any organization with needs that deviate from Joe User. Maybe but being slightly over aggressive means a world in terms of user happiness. Think about email before Gmail. How much junk did you see in your inbox? There is a lot LESS today. Joe User would be very happy if they dried to think about it for a second.
      - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
        > How would you implement a spam filter? What do you mean "implement"? You are aware that there exists free spam filtering software that you can install, like, say, spamassassin (which has been around longer than gmail)? > Maybe but being slightly over aggressive means a world in terms of user happiness. Dropping legitimate emails is good for user happiness? You have strange users. I imagine if the post office decided to throw away some letters "slighty over aggressive[ly]" ... there are people who would be happy if that happened? > Think about email before Gmail. How much junk did you see in your inbox? There is a lot LESS today. I see maybe one to three spam mails per day, with nearly zero false positives (maybe one per year). And that's without gmail. Obviously, I could reduce that to zero spam, at the cost of increased false positives, which is not a sensible option as far as I am concerned, deleting three mails per day isn't really all that much work.

sbierwagen 10y ago

Everything that someone else could do on an email server that they run for you, they could just as well package into, say, an install CD image, which you then could use to run your own functionally equivalent, hopefully well-configured and well-updated, mail server. https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/

AstralStorm 10y ago

The only remaining trouble is having to look up all those mail servers with improper DNS setup. No SPF, no DNSSEC, no keys.