6 ms·

I run my own mail server as well, on my own domain, own server, physically present in my home. It's increasingly becoming a hassle.. Especially sending mail fr

by dusted 4y ago

I run my own mail server as well, on my own domain, own server, physically present in my home. It's increasingly becoming a hassle.. Especially sending mail from a "consumer" line is tricky, they block outgoing port 25 and no longer really provide a relay host for you to go through either.. I basically had to infiltrate my current ISP to get access to people in netops and gaslight them into configuring reverse-dns and leak enough info to me to get access to use their relay.. Back when I got my first ADSL, the ISP apologized for blocking port 25 and explained how to use their relay.. Things sure have turned sour in that regard. To this end, I've become convinced that the only fair thing to do is make email a human right. Nation states absolutely should provide and host, e-mail accounts for their citizens. (it can be up to the citizens how they want to use these accounts, if they want to use them only for receiving mail from the state, or if they want to use them for everything else too).

fuzzy2 4y ago
You could always use a service like Mailgun to work around problems like that. It could help with IP/network reputation problems, too. I think that’s a reasonable option if it enables running a mail server at home.
- powerhour 4y ago
  In my experience (from a few years ago) Mailgun had terrible deliverability to Microsoft and Yahoo. There would be long periods where those providers would return nothing but anti-spam errors, based on Mailgun's own logs.
actionfromafar 4y ago
What can work really well, is to rent the cheapest, smallest VPS you can find. Then redirect the SMTP port with a VPN to your local server, which can be anywhere in the world. You can run IMAP the same way if you want to.
- dusted 4y ago
  Personally, I'm fully capable of doing that, but even then, it's all entirely dependent on the graces of random VPS providers, it's another route I'd rather not go, I already find it repugnant that the Internet service itself is in the hands of private entities which are under no obligation to provide any specific quality of service (not an enforceable one anyway, as I cannot really chose whose running the actual network fabric, even if I can chose which "company" I pay the bill to). Geez, if water and power delivery was as unregulated as Internet delivery, we'd be like "well, it's mostly AC, maybe DC offset a few thousand volts, on sundays it's 10 hz slower, and it's somewhere in the range of 100 and 500 volts" "Yeah, this is what we call water.. No, we don't support Hydrogen molecules, they're dangerous you see." On top of that, most people don't care (don't know why they should) and don't have the ability to host this infrastructure themselves, and frankly, they shouldn't have to either..
  - nulbyte 4y ago
    I find RackNerd suits me just well. They are a great provider. I found them on Low End Boxes. I pay $25 a year. The only thing I ran into was the IP that was assigned was in one blacklist. It was one of the notoriously overzealous blacklists that hate everyone, though it was simple enough to request removal. No problems since.
    - kiririn 4y ago
      Also a happy customer of racknerd but beware the owner has a dubious history in the hosting business and is currently undergoing related criminal proceedings https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/180381/some-juicy-court-drama-involving-alpharacks-racknerd-dustin https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/180381/some-juicy-court-dr...
      - immibis 4y ago
        This link is login-walled.
NavinF 4y ago
> Nation states absolutely should provide and host, e-mail accounts for their citizens Because nation states are well known for producing usable software at a reasonable cost to tax payers? IRL this would cost billions and everyone under 60 would forward their gov’t mail to gmail.
- rekabis 4y ago
  >Because nation states are well known for producing usable software at a reasonable cost to tax payers? The largest transfer of public property into the hands of private enterprise in human history was the Internet. At that time it was wild and limitless and full of promise. It’s pretty much stagnated from there. Just like scientific and medical research, tech research is the most effective and has the largest societal benefit when done at public universities on the taxpayer’s dime.
  - achenet 4y ago
    > Just like scientific and medical research, tech research is the most effective and has the largest societal benefit when done at public universities on the taxpayer’s dime. counter-example: Bell Labs.
    - komali2 4y ago
      Was that entirely private? I thought Bell Labs was getting operating budget from Western Electric, which while also private, as I recall, was getting massive investment from the US government to develop infrastructure across the USA? And then wasn't there also DARPA funding? Also, they seemed unaggressive with their patents, licensing tons of them quite freely. Also, is it good that Bell labs was the way it was? Americans seem to have quite a hard go with telecom, maybe not as bad as some countries, but from what I can see the country is riddled with regional functional monopolies, gaps in service, high prices for rural areas, and bad behavior regarding net neutrality on the part of ISPs. Perhaps the situation wouldn't be so bad if the USA had nationalized, or at least partially nationalized, its phone and internet systems?
  - 4y ago
bborud 4y ago
This kind of exists in Norway in the sense that we have at least two systems for communicating with government offices and, to some degree other organizations and people (haven't quite figured that out). This isn't an email solution as such though. The thing is, all of these solutions are much maligned - despite being a lot better than what we had before (send/receive paper). If the state were to offer email accounts, people would complain about how bad they were (whether true or not) and argue that we should "let the market sort it out". Which brings us to where we are now. With the market "sorting it out".
farseer 4y ago
Of-course even with end to end encryption, the amount of meta data available to the government in this configuration would be a systematic risk to democracy.
genem9 4y ago
Regarding nation states, this sounds like a wet dream of any govt. to be able to centrally mine your email data :facepalm. I know the NSA can probably do it but at least it’s somewhat gated to that intelligence community. Opening it up further is a recipe for disaster.
- octobus2021 4y ago
  The point is that since so many services require email it's getting to the point that not having an email is a major hurdle, and therefore government must recognize it as being part of critical infrastructure and provide this service, just as they do with USPS. IRS (US govt tax authority) requires email account to register and pay taxes. So that the state government, and the county where I live as well. My kids school requires email to register kids for school and for their many educational systems; so does their pediatrician office. Bank accounts require email. The list goes on. All of these cannot and should not be anonymous and I do not have any problems with using government-provided email provider to use these. I do want to have an option to use other emails for my streaming accounts, shopping, and all the other stuff, so that I'm not required to use the same email address everywhere. I can rent my own domain name and use the email service tied top that. That'd work for me.
causi 4y ago
Everyone deserves an e-mail that can't be taken away from them without a court order.
- koolba 4y ago
  Sadly the vast majority won't realize they not only deserve it, but need it, until it's too late. The best time to use a custom domain name under your control for personal email was when you first started corresponding via email. The second best time is now.
- waqf 4y ago
  And a phone number, and a bank account/CC number (so that you won't get escalatingly locked out of stuff because your direct debits fail. Don't ever use N26, kids.)
  - immibis 4y ago
    But N26 is (allegedly) the only bank you can use without your government paperwork proving you live at an address which you have to rent using your bank account.
- jimcavel888 4y ago
justinlloyd 4y ago
And I _too_ run my own email server on my own domain. Though it resides on a dedicated server that I own in a data center somewhere in the Mid-West. The web mail cient it has is kind of crap though. I run a secondary "mail server" in my home, with a better webmail client, and is also configured with better spam protection and syncs with my android phone and outlook on my laptop, and that local email server that is configured to retrieve email from the data center server, along with retrieving email from gmail and a few other old email systems that I still have access too. Controlling my own email server, and my online identity that goes with it, is far better than entrusting it to someone like Google (who got about one step away from cancelling my Google account when they lost a phone I returned for repair, but that's a different story). Interestingly, running my own server in a data center lets me run a permanent, private VPN from my home network to the data center, effectively hiding me away from any monitoring from my cable provider, using the DNS I want to make use of, blocking traffic I don't want leaking out or coming in. I have a smaller, less capable server in the UK also running a permanent, private VPN. Depending on which WiFi SSID I connect to within my home, determines if I appear as being in the US or the UK, which gives me access to different streaming services, different streaming content, different website experiences, etc.

by dusted 4y ago

fuzzy2 4y ago

You could always use a service like Mailgun to work around problems like that. It could help with IP/network reputation problems, too. I think that’s a reasonable option if it enables running a mail server at home.

powerhour 4y ago
In my experience (from a few years ago) Mailgun had terrible deliverability to Microsoft and Yahoo. There would be long periods where those providers would return nothing but anti-spam errors, based on Mailgun's own logs.

actionfromafar 4y ago

What can work really well, is to rent the cheapest, smallest VPS you can find. Then redirect the SMTP port with a VPN to your local server, which can be anywhere in the world. You can run IMAP the same way if you want to.

dusted 4y ago
Personally, I'm fully capable of doing that, but even then, it's all entirely dependent on the graces of random VPS providers, it's another route I'd rather not go, I already find it repugnant that the Internet service itself is in the hands of private entities which are under no obligation to provide any specific quality of service (not an enforceable one anyway, as I cannot really chose whose running the actual network fabric, even if I can chose which "company" I pay the bill to). Geez, if water and power delivery was as unregulated as Internet delivery, we'd be like "well, it's mostly AC, maybe DC offset a few thousand volts, on sundays it's 10 hz slower, and it's somewhere in the range of 100 and 500 volts" "Yeah, this is what we call water.. No, we don't support Hydrogen molecules, they're dangerous you see." On top of that, most people don't care (don't know why they should) and don't have the ability to host this infrastructure themselves, and frankly, they shouldn't have to either..
- nulbyte 4y ago
  I find RackNerd suits me just well. They are a great provider. I found them on Low End Boxes. I pay $25 a year. The only thing I ran into was the IP that was assigned was in one blacklist. It was one of the notoriously overzealous blacklists that hate everyone, though it was simple enough to request removal. No problems since.
  - kiririn 4y ago
    Also a happy customer of racknerd but beware the owner has a dubious history in the hosting business and is currently undergoing related criminal proceedings https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/180381/some-juicy-court-drama-involving-alpharacks-racknerd-dustin https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/180381/some-juicy-court-dr...
    - immibis 4y ago
      This link is login-walled.

NavinF 4y ago

> Nation states absolutely should provide and host, e-mail accounts for their citizens Because nation states are well known for producing usable software at a reasonable cost to tax payers? IRL this would cost billions and everyone under 60 would forward their gov’t mail to gmail.

rekabis 4y ago
>Because nation states are well known for producing usable software at a reasonable cost to tax payers? The largest transfer of public property into the hands of private enterprise in human history was the Internet. At that time it was wild and limitless and full of promise. It’s pretty much stagnated from there. Just like scientific and medical research, tech research is the most effective and has the largest societal benefit when done at public universities on the taxpayer’s dime.
- achenet 4y ago
  > Just like scientific and medical research, tech research is the most effective and has the largest societal benefit when done at public universities on the taxpayer’s dime. counter-example: Bell Labs.
  - komali2 4y ago
    Was that entirely private? I thought Bell Labs was getting operating budget from Western Electric, which while also private, as I recall, was getting massive investment from the US government to develop infrastructure across the USA? And then wasn't there also DARPA funding? Also, they seemed unaggressive with their patents, licensing tons of them quite freely. Also, is it good that Bell labs was the way it was? Americans seem to have quite a hard go with telecom, maybe not as bad as some countries, but from what I can see the country is riddled with regional functional monopolies, gaps in service, high prices for rural areas, and bad behavior regarding net neutrality on the part of ISPs. Perhaps the situation wouldn't be so bad if the USA had nationalized, or at least partially nationalized, its phone and internet systems?
- 4y ago

bborud 4y ago

This kind of exists in Norway in the sense that we have at least two systems for communicating with government offices and, to some degree other organizations and people (haven't quite figured that out). This isn't an email solution as such though. The thing is, all of these solutions are much maligned - despite being a lot better than what we had before (send/receive paper). If the state were to offer email accounts, people would complain about how bad they were (whether true or not) and argue that we should "let the market sort it out". Which brings us to where we are now. With the market "sorting it out".

farseer 4y ago

Of-course even with end to end encryption, the amount of meta data available to the government in this configuration would be a systematic risk to democracy.

genem9 4y ago

Regarding nation states, this sounds like a wet dream of any govt. to be able to centrally mine your email data :facepalm. I know the NSA can probably do it but at least it’s somewhat gated to that intelligence community. Opening it up further is a recipe for disaster.

octobus2021 4y ago
The point is that since so many services require email it's getting to the point that not having an email is a major hurdle, and therefore government must recognize it as being part of critical infrastructure and provide this service, just as they do with USPS. IRS (US govt tax authority) requires email account to register and pay taxes. So that the state government, and the county where I live as well. My kids school requires email to register kids for school and for their many educational systems; so does their pediatrician office. Bank accounts require email. The list goes on. All of these cannot and should not be anonymous and I do not have any problems with using government-provided email provider to use these. I do want to have an option to use other emails for my streaming accounts, shopping, and all the other stuff, so that I'm not required to use the same email address everywhere. I can rent my own domain name and use the email service tied top that. That'd work for me.

causi 4y ago

Everyone deserves an e-mail that can't be taken away from them without a court order.

koolba 4y ago
Sadly the vast majority won't realize they not only deserve it, but need it, until it's too late. The best time to use a custom domain name under your control for personal email was when you first started corresponding via email. The second best time is now.
waqf 4y ago
And a phone number, and a bank account/CC number (so that you won't get escalatingly locked out of stuff because your direct debits fail. Don't ever use N26, kids.)
- immibis 4y ago
  But N26 is (allegedly) the only bank you can use without your government paperwork proving you live at an address which you have to rent using your bank account.
jimcavel888 4y ago

justinlloyd 4y ago

And I _too_ run my own email server on my own domain. Though it resides on a dedicated server that I own in a data center somewhere in the Mid-West. The web mail cient it has is kind of crap though. I run a secondary "mail server" in my home, with a better webmail client, and is also configured with better spam protection and syncs with my android phone and outlook on my laptop, and that local email server that is configured to retrieve email from the data center server, along with retrieving email from gmail and a few other old email systems that I still have access too. Controlling my own email server, and my online identity that goes with it, is far better than entrusting it to someone like Google (who got about one step away from cancelling my Google account when they lost a phone I returned for repair, but that's a different story). Interestingly, running my own server in a data center lets me run a permanent, private VPN from my home network to the data center, effectively hiding me away from any monitoring from my cable provider, using the DNS I want to make use of, blocking traffic I don't want leaking out or coming in. I have a smaller, less capable server in the UK also running a permanent, private VPN. Depending on which WiFi SSID I connect to within my home, determines if I appear as being in the US or the UK, which gives me access to different streaming services, different streaming content, different website experiences, etc.