5 ms·

EVERYONE did this for decades. Then EVERYONE stopped because it's awful. Modern ISPs don't like SMTP floating around, (DKIM, DMARC, SPF) are a pain to maintain

by jjirsa 7y ago

EVERYONE did this for decades. Then EVERYONE stopped because it's awful. Modern ISPs don't like SMTP floating around, (DKIM, DMARC, SPF) are a pain to maintain over time, exploits will happen, and your free off-the-shelf virus and spam filters suck compared to the big companies seeing billions of messages per day.

twobat 7y ago
Most ISP don't care about it. But there are certain enterprises that know almost nothing about email, they employ "specialized tools" that scan and classify incoming email (read Symantec whatever) and make evereyone's lives harder.
- jjirsa 7y ago
  It's not that they dont know or don't care - it's that not being super aggressive with filtering caused people to almost abandon email a decade ago because spam became unbearable for most people. Those "specialized tools" make email viable. Without it, everyone would be spoofing everything and you wouldn't use email anymore.
  - twobat 7y ago
    At my last place of work one could send as ceo@company. Still, they had crazy (proprietary) filtering. People make things better by accident, in the mean time they tick check boxes.
- big_chungus 7y ago
  I once got a nasty-gram from my ISP for running a mail server out of my house. Exceptionally low-traffic; two to three messages per week max.
pixelHD 7y ago
I had my own mail server running for close to a year after which i gave up because i started seeing issues delivering mail to gmail and apple mail accounts. I had to keep tinkering with the DKIM/DMARC/SPF entries to make sure i'm compliant with gmail/outlook/etc. At somepoint i gave up because it wasn't worth the investment of time. FWIW, i used mail cow [0], which was a delight to setup and use. And it comes bundled with a decent-ish material design webclient. I would love to go back to hosting my own mail server though. As of now, i shut it down, and use gsuite. [0]: https://mailcow.email/ https://mailcow.email/
- number6 7y ago
  Still running my mailcow. I don't care if people don't get my mail. I can show them that i handed the over to their server - everything else is their concern. At least legally. If you can't read my mail cause you misconfigured your spam filter I can't help.
  - jjirsa 7y ago
    > I don't care if people don't get my mail This is the type of nonsense I expect from HN. Well done.
    - madez 7y ago
      When someone in a company agrees on a meeting in their office with someone from outside the company, and the visitor arrives at time well-dressed and is rejected by the companies security without any explanation, then who is at fault? It is not the visitor, it is the awful cooperation between the person in the company and their companies security. It is entirely reasonable to show how you've handed your mail to gmail and they refused it without actionable explanation, so it is a problem between the recipient and gmail.
      - jjirsa 7y ago
        GMail being at fault isn't going to make up for a missed invitation (or RSVP) to a special event, or not getting a note of congratulations on an accomplishment, or not getting a message of condolences. Assigning blame is done after the fact to make up for a mistake. Just avoid the mistake.
        madez 7y ago
        If one completely disregards political consequences, and generally anything but personal short-term benefit, I agree with your reasoning. Otherwise, I see not how that would be possible. And I think arguing just for short-term practicality is deeply flawed; by that you'd also cooperate with a murdering dictator if it helped you personally.
juped 7y ago
I would love to do it again. Mail stopped inboxing, ever, with people I regularly corresponded with in the mid 2010s. I had to stop.
jjav 7y ago
> your free off-the-shelf virus and spam filters suck compared to the big companies seeing billions of messages per day gmail spam filtering is quite bad, in both directions. Legit email goes to spam (even when sent from gmail itself) and spam does get through. The basic open source tools are actually very, very good at it. I get about 0-2 spams a month, everything else is caught by either my postfix configuration or by spamprobe. And I never get legit email in my spam spool. This is a much better success rate than what I observe at my gmail account.
- berkes 7y ago
  Indeed, I'd argue that a selfhosted learning spamfilter will be far more attuned to your personal mail-regime than one that has to do 'well enough' for millions of users. The latter will catch new spam tricks easier. But the former will be trained by you. For you. For your niche, using your lingo and so on. To take an extreme example: let's imagine you are the ITperson for a doctors' practice aimed at people with sexual disfunctionality. One thing is for certain: using Google or Outlook for your mail is a disaster waiting to happen.
a-dub 7y ago
my thoughts exactly. it used to be fun to provide hosting and email for yourself and friends, but then constantly upgrading and tweaking spam filters was just a huge waste of time. from what i understand, the gmails, yahoos, outlooks, whatevers of the world basically make it hard on purpose to make their own jobs easier.

by jjirsa 7y ago

twobat 7y ago

Most ISP don't care about it. But there are certain enterprises that know almost nothing about email, they employ "specialized tools" that scan and classify incoming email (read Symantec whatever) and make evereyone's lives harder.

jjirsa 7y ago
It's not that they dont know or don't care - it's that not being super aggressive with filtering caused people to almost abandon email a decade ago because spam became unbearable for most people. Those "specialized tools" make email viable. Without it, everyone would be spoofing everything and you wouldn't use email anymore.
- twobat 7y ago
  At my last place of work one could send as ceo@company. Still, they had crazy (proprietary) filtering. People make things better by accident, in the mean time they tick check boxes.
big_chungus 7y ago
I once got a nasty-gram from my ISP for running a mail server out of my house. Exceptionally low-traffic; two to three messages per week max.

pixelHD 7y ago

I had my own mail server running for close to a year after which i gave up because i started seeing issues delivering mail to gmail and apple mail accounts. I had to keep tinkering with the DKIM/DMARC/SPF entries to make sure i'm compliant with gmail/outlook/etc. At somepoint i gave up because it wasn't worth the investment of time. FWIW, i used mail cow [0], which was a delight to setup and use. And it comes bundled with a decent-ish material design webclient. I would love to go back to hosting my own mail server though. As of now, i shut it down, and use gsuite. [0]: https://mailcow.email/ https://mailcow.email/

number6 7y ago
Still running my mailcow. I don't care if people don't get my mail. I can show them that i handed the over to their server - everything else is their concern. At least legally. If you can't read my mail cause you misconfigured your spam filter I can't help.
- jjirsa 7y ago
  > I don't care if people don't get my mail This is the type of nonsense I expect from HN. Well done.
  - madez 7y ago
    When someone in a company agrees on a meeting in their office with someone from outside the company, and the visitor arrives at time well-dressed and is rejected by the companies security without any explanation, then who is at fault? It is not the visitor, it is the awful cooperation between the person in the company and their companies security. It is entirely reasonable to show how you've handed your mail to gmail and they refused it without actionable explanation, so it is a problem between the recipient and gmail.
    - jjirsa 7y ago
      GMail being at fault isn't going to make up for a missed invitation (or RSVP) to a special event, or not getting a note of congratulations on an accomplishment, or not getting a message of condolences. Assigning blame is done after the fact to make up for a mistake. Just avoid the mistake.
      - madez 7y ago
        If one completely disregards political consequences, and generally anything but personal short-term benefit, I agree with your reasoning. Otherwise, I see not how that would be possible. And I think arguing just for short-term practicality is deeply flawed; by that you'd also cooperate with a murdering dictator if it helped you personally.

juped 7y ago

I would love to do it again. Mail stopped inboxing, ever, with people I regularly corresponded with in the mid 2010s. I had to stop.

jjav 7y ago

> your free off-the-shelf virus and spam filters suck compared to the big companies seeing billions of messages per day gmail spam filtering is quite bad, in both directions. Legit email goes to spam (even when sent from gmail itself) and spam does get through. The basic open source tools are actually very, very good at it. I get about 0-2 spams a month, everything else is caught by either my postfix configuration or by spamprobe. And I never get legit email in my spam spool. This is a much better success rate than what I observe at my gmail account.

berkes 7y ago
Indeed, I'd argue that a selfhosted learning spamfilter will be far more attuned to your personal mail-regime than one that has to do 'well enough' for millions of users. The latter will catch new spam tricks easier. But the former will be trained by you. For you. For your niche, using your lingo and so on. To take an extreme example: let's imagine you are the ITperson for a doctors' practice aimed at people with sexual disfunctionality. One thing is for certain: using Google or Outlook for your mail is a disaster waiting to happen.

a-dub 7y ago

my thoughts exactly. it used to be fun to provide hosting and email for yourself and friends, but then constantly upgrading and tweaking spam filters was just a huge waste of time. from what i understand, the gmails, yahoos, outlooks, whatevers of the world basically make it hard on purpose to make their own jobs easier.