8 ms·

I am not an email spammer, an SEO spammer, an automated password cracker, or a jaded failed Google canidate. I have my mailserver configured in pretty much an

by throwaway2048 7y ago

I am not an email spammer, an SEO spammer, an automated password cracker, or a jaded failed Google canidate. I have my mailserver configured in pretty much an optimal way, with all the special bells and whistles, have never sent spam, and never will. Gmail refuses to deliver my mail, so please don't lump me in with malicious people and then say my concerns should just be ignored.

mav3rick 7y ago
"pretty much an optimal way".
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  Believe it or not, its possible to carefully look into things and check them, but I understand its much easier to be smug and assume that its my fault.
  - LeonM 7y ago
    Judging by your username I don't expect you to share the domain name here, but if you need a second opinion, send me a PM and I'll analyse the domain for you. There is usually some misconfiguration somewhere that goes overlooked. Happens to the best of us :-)
    - aschismatic 7y ago
      I've thought about setting up a mail server on a DigitalOcean or Vultr VPS without any experience with mail servers (for person use). Whenever I read opinions about operating a private mail server, there's usually a few people that express great satisfaction in doing so, and say that it's not too difficult. However, there are also many more people that say it's not worth the effort since there's maintenance to consider, complex setup, and the cost of email providers is usually the same or less than running your own server. What is your opinion (or others' if they'd like to chime in)? If you enjoy running your own, are there any guides in particular that you'd recommend? Does the future of email look even more prohibitively complex for self-hosting?
      - away_throw 7y ago
        Honestly, running an E-Mail is so tedious that I just allow Migadu to manage it for me. You have to deal with configuration (as the original poster said) and run into issues with systems just blocking you outright (especially Outlook). There are some utilities or Docker images that make it easier, but in the end its not worth the hassle. I still think domain-based email is way better than allowing G-Mail or Outlook to host your email though.
        aschismatic 7y ago
        When you say domain-based, you mean using a email-hosting provider with a custom domain, is that right? I currently have my custom domain set up with G Suite for email and am thinking that's probably good enough.
      - LeonM 7y ago
        Self hosting has become harder due to email abuse (spam, phishing, impersonation, etc) and the measures against this that have been introduced. Following a guide to setup a basic email service is quite easy to do, but after a while the lack of proper implementation and maintenance of the standards will start to cause deliverability issues. Those are frustrating and most end up writing a long rant on why Google is evil because their email ended up in spam. When in fact, it usually is a misconfiguration, but those can be really hard to detect. IMO there is still great satisfaction in running any internet service yourself. But, if you rely on this service to work, it just no longer makes financial sense to do so. It takes resources to keep any internet service running correctly. Even the simple stuff can quickly get overlooked, I have seen so many self-hosted email servers that have expired certificates (like with the domain of the OP) or lack support for any of the modern security extensions such as DMARC or MTA-STS. For most businesses my recommendation is not to run it yourself. Like you wouldn't run your own DNS service anymore. Of course it can be done, and in some cases it makes sense to run stuff yourself (usually when operating at a very large scale). But it almost always makes more financial sense to use a hosted email solution. We haven't written a guide (yet) on setting up an email server with all the bells and whistles. But if you want to read more on all the email security standards, have a look here: https://www.mailhardener.com/kb/ https://www.mailhardener.com/kb/
    - cnst 7y ago
      If this is the kind of technical advice you provide, which merely assumes that Google can do no wrong, and the user on the other end is incapable of pressing a button on a yet another website that checks email configuration, merely to confirm that the configuration of their mail server is not in any way incorrect, then it's not a surprise that you get downvoted into oblivion, according to your own statement earlier in this thread.
      - mav3rick 7y ago
        I can't provide any technical advice unless the op shows their config. I am downvoted because this community is already biased thinking Google must be at fault and the configuration can't be wrong at all ?.
        cnst 7y ago
        I would say the community is biased the other way around, where everyone always thinks that it's the little guy that has invalid configuration, instead of Google being at fault. What sort of config do you require from the OP? Their domain name is public and uncensored right in the top of the post. Their configuration has been cross-checked by many people so far. A lot of folks claimed that it has issues (like a `?all` in SPF, or `p=none` in DMARC, or some other nonsense that any spammer would easily get right), but those issues have been rebuked as not being significant to the issue at stake, plus, there's absolutely no confirmation that fixing these "issues" would resolve the problem, either.
        dang 7y ago
        You were surely downvoted for posting unsubstantive and bilious comments, which don't belong here. Please make your substantive points more thoughtfully. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - dang 7y ago
        "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dageshi 7y ago
And is your server sitting on the same IP range as those that do? Do you know? Google provides a service to its users, they don't provide a service to you.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jiofih 7y ago
  Why would you assume that?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- EvanAnderson 7y ago
  Isn't receiving legitimate email and delivering it to Inboxes part of the service it provides to its users?
  - tytso 7y ago
    Filtering SPAM mail with an acceptable false positive and false negative rate is part of the service. Unfortunately for you, the e-mail providers' customers (the users receiving the mail) get to decide what is an unacceptably high false positive/negative rate --- and not you. If e-mail recipients get too much SPAM or if they get mail that they want landing in their Spam folder too often, then they will switch. This provides the economic incentive for mail providers to Get Things Right. Unfortunately, there is so much spam out there that if you are too relaxed with letting marginal e-mails (or e-mails from marginal network neighborhoods through) the false negative rate could result in so much spam in users' inbox that they will get mad, and switch. However, it can happen that the email provider can be too sensitive, and there can be too high of a false positive rate. For example MIT recently tried relying Microsoft's spam filtering system. Way too much stuff landed in the spam filter, and while you could go to the spam filter and manually mark e-mails as "not spam" and eventually Microsoft's ML algorithms would hopefully figure it out, the false positive rate was too high and the MIT community (especially the ones with the real power, e.g., the professors) rose up with an outcry, and MIT abandoned using Microsoft's Spam filtering service.
lonelappde 7y ago
That may be true, but unless you post relevant technical details, that means nothing to strangers in the Internet.
tracker1 7y ago
Have you considered using a full TLD and hosting and/or relaying through a reputable service. I've used mailgun and sendgrid both for moderate accounts for outbound email and didn't have any issues. There's also hosting options for mail ranging from fastmail, to google, MS and others. In the end, TFA is from a subdomain that seems to have a lot of spam, and to avoid it may mean using A commercial option, if not a specific commercial option. It sucks.. but the mail relays I mention above are relatively cheap and easy to properly setup with limited issues on the other side.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  I am not interested in a third party handling mail for me.
krageon 7y ago
If you were doing everything right it would work, unless you sent email from an IP known to send spam in the past. That doesn't necessarily mean you did, but it does mean your IP did at some point. Given the saturation of the ipv4 space this isn't exceptionally unlikely. In any case, your post is contrarian and doesn't offer any substance aside from the fact that you are angry. That's kind of saddening because that was already pointed out as exactly the problem.

mav3rick 7y ago

"pretty much an optimal way".

throwaway2048 7y ago
Believe it or not, its possible to carefully look into things and check them, but I understand its much easier to be smug and assume that its my fault.
- LeonM 7y ago
  Judging by your username I don't expect you to share the domain name here, but if you need a second opinion, send me a PM and I'll analyse the domain for you. There is usually some misconfiguration somewhere that goes overlooked. Happens to the best of us :-)
  - aschismatic 7y ago
    I've thought about setting up a mail server on a DigitalOcean or Vultr VPS without any experience with mail servers (for person use). Whenever I read opinions about operating a private mail server, there's usually a few people that express great satisfaction in doing so, and say that it's not too difficult. However, there are also many more people that say it's not worth the effort since there's maintenance to consider, complex setup, and the cost of email providers is usually the same or less than running your own server. What is your opinion (or others' if they'd like to chime in)? If you enjoy running your own, are there any guides in particular that you'd recommend? Does the future of email look even more prohibitively complex for self-hosting?
    - away_throw 7y ago
      Honestly, running an E-Mail is so tedious that I just allow Migadu to manage it for me. You have to deal with configuration (as the original poster said) and run into issues with systems just blocking you outright (especially Outlook). There are some utilities or Docker images that make it easier, but in the end its not worth the hassle. I still think domain-based email is way better than allowing G-Mail or Outlook to host your email though.
      - aschismatic 7y ago
        When you say domain-based, you mean using a email-hosting provider with a custom domain, is that right? I currently have my custom domain set up with G Suite for email and am thinking that's probably good enough.
    - LeonM 7y ago
      Self hosting has become harder due to email abuse (spam, phishing, impersonation, etc) and the measures against this that have been introduced. Following a guide to setup a basic email service is quite easy to do, but after a while the lack of proper implementation and maintenance of the standards will start to cause deliverability issues. Those are frustrating and most end up writing a long rant on why Google is evil because their email ended up in spam. When in fact, it usually is a misconfiguration, but those can be really hard to detect. IMO there is still great satisfaction in running any internet service yourself. But, if you rely on this service to work, it just no longer makes financial sense to do so. It takes resources to keep any internet service running correctly. Even the simple stuff can quickly get overlooked, I have seen so many self-hosted email servers that have expired certificates (like with the domain of the OP) or lack support for any of the modern security extensions such as DMARC or MTA-STS. For most businesses my recommendation is not to run it yourself. Like you wouldn't run your own DNS service anymore. Of course it can be done, and in some cases it makes sense to run stuff yourself (usually when operating at a very large scale). But it almost always makes more financial sense to use a hosted email solution. We haven't written a guide (yet) on setting up an email server with all the bells and whistles. But if you want to read more on all the email security standards, have a look here: https://www.mailhardener.com/kb/ https://www.mailhardener.com/kb/
  - cnst 7y ago
    If this is the kind of technical advice you provide, which merely assumes that Google can do no wrong, and the user on the other end is incapable of pressing a button on a yet another website that checks email configuration, merely to confirm that the configuration of their mail server is not in any way incorrect, then it's not a surprise that you get downvoted into oblivion, according to your own statement earlier in this thread.
    - mav3rick 7y ago
      I can't provide any technical advice unless the op shows their config. I am downvoted because this community is already biased thinking Google must be at fault and the configuration can't be wrong at all ?.
      - cnst 7y ago
        I would say the community is biased the other way around, where everyone always thinks that it's the little guy that has invalid configuration, instead of Google being at fault. What sort of config do you require from the OP? Their domain name is public and uncensored right in the top of the post. Their configuration has been cross-checked by many people so far. A lot of folks claimed that it has issues (like a `?all` in SPF, or `p=none` in DMARC, or some other nonsense that any spammer would easily get right), but those issues have been rebuked as not being significant to the issue at stake, plus, there's absolutely no confirmation that fixing these "issues" would resolve the problem, either.
      - dang 7y ago
        You were surely downvoted for posting unsubstantive and bilious comments, which don't belong here. Please make your substantive points more thoughtfully. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - dang 7y ago
      "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dageshi 7y ago

And is your server sitting on the same IP range as those that do? Do you know? Google provides a service to its users, they don't provide a service to you.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jiofih 7y ago
Why would you assume that?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
EvanAnderson 7y ago
Isn't receiving legitimate email and delivering it to Inboxes part of the service it provides to its users?
- tytso 7y ago
  Filtering SPAM mail with an acceptable false positive and false negative rate is part of the service. Unfortunately for you, the e-mail providers' customers (the users receiving the mail) get to decide what is an unacceptably high false positive/negative rate --- and not you. If e-mail recipients get too much SPAM or if they get mail that they want landing in their Spam folder too often, then they will switch. This provides the economic incentive for mail providers to Get Things Right. Unfortunately, there is so much spam out there that if you are too relaxed with letting marginal e-mails (or e-mails from marginal network neighborhoods through) the false negative rate could result in so much spam in users' inbox that they will get mad, and switch. However, it can happen that the email provider can be too sensitive, and there can be too high of a false positive rate. For example MIT recently tried relying Microsoft's spam filtering system. Way too much stuff landed in the spam filter, and while you could go to the spam filter and manually mark e-mails as "not spam" and eventually Microsoft's ML algorithms would hopefully figure it out, the false positive rate was too high and the MIT community (especially the ones with the real power, e.g., the professors) rose up with an outcry, and MIT abandoned using Microsoft's Spam filtering service.

lonelappde 7y ago

That may be true, but unless you post relevant technical details, that means nothing to strangers in the Internet.

tracker1 7y ago

Have you considered using a full TLD and hosting and/or relaying through a reputable service. I've used mailgun and sendgrid both for moderate accounts for outbound email and didn't have any issues. There's also hosting options for mail ranging from fastmail, to google, MS and others. In the end, TFA is from a subdomain that seems to have a lot of spam, and to avoid it may mean using A commercial option, if not a specific commercial option. It sucks.. but the mail relays I mention above are relatively cheap and easy to properly setup with limited issues on the other side.

throwaway2048 7y ago
I am not interested in a third party handling mail for me.

krageon 7y ago

If you were doing everything right it would work, unless you sent email from an IP known to send spam in the past. That doesn't necessarily mean you did, but it does mean your IP did at some point. Given the saturation of the ipv4 space this isn't exceptionally unlikely. In any case, your post is contrarian and doesn't offer any substance aside from the fact that you are angry. That's kind of saddening because that was already pointed out as exactly the problem.