4 ms·

This is exactly the right perspective. If the US has secret warrants in the form of NSL (National Security Letters) or similar, it's easy to imagine Australia h

by kaffee 12y ago

This is exactly the right perspective. If the US has secret warrants in the form of NSL (National Security Letters) or similar, it's easy to imagine Australia having precisely the same thing. I've enjoyed being a user of fastmail for some time but I'll be switching to one of the new projects (e.g., LEAP) or self-hosting in the future.

vog 12y ago
>I'll be switching to [...] or self-hosting in the future I can really recommend self-hosted email. This is not as hard as it sounds. Of course, you should have the following abilities: 1) find some good documentation (or friend) that explains a clean setup with spam filter, correct DNS/SPF and HELO entries, such that you don't get on the blacklists. Note that this is almost a one-time effort, you'll have to adjust things every 5-10 years, I guess. [1] 2) be able to administrate a Linux/BSD machine, i.e. to keep it simple and up-to-date in the long term. I really hope that Tuxevara will finish his series about a modern email setup. This is his first part: http://www.tuxevara.de/2014/11/mailserver-reloaded-step-1/ http://www.tuxevara.de/2014/11/mailserver-reloaded-step-1/ [1] For example, I had to add SPF entries since my mailserver also had an IPv6 address, otherwise Google and others blocked me - for understandable reasons.
- thyrsus 12y ago
  Where does one host such a service such that one's neighbors haven't put your subnet on e-mail block lists? I wasn't able to host e-mail from my home IP address; do spammers not pollute the waters at hosting companies? Can you buy an IP address that isn't blacklisted, and won't be part of a subnet block?
  - vog 12y ago
    Since there is so much malware out there delivering spam from private computers, dynamic IP ranges (which is what you usually get at home) are part of every modern blacklist. Yes, this is very unfortunate. It means that you'll either have to rent some server or virtual server (which makes sense if you want to run tons of other services there). Or, you'll need some VPN (possibly in addition to an IPv6 tunnel), which is cheaper. A third option is to rent an own server/vserver, but to keep the costs low by sharing it with friends.
- goblin89 12y ago
  > I can really recommend self-hosted email. This is not as hard as it sounds. For me the biggest hurdle is absolutely not the manual setup process or the need to adjust things from time to time. Rather, it’s the fact that there doesn’t seem to be a simple, quick and reliable way to tell if my setup actually works. How can I be sure that my email actually reaches its destination? That there’s no error in my DNS entries? That an obscure email service used by one of my clients doesn’t whitelist only major email providers? Can I be sure that things fail loudly when they don’t work? I really hope I’m wrong and it’s possible to implement some kind of monitoring that tests my self-hosted setup and alerts me by SMS if something’s wrong with it.
  - pmahoney 12y ago
    I've self-hosted my email for years, and for the past 5 or so have had a stable IP address. I've got SPF records, but am missing DKIM. I've had no problems, but just recently I had two separate emails be ignored by GMail users. Some followup communication suggests to me the mails were never seen, but I am unable to find out if they ended up in the spam folder or not. (At least one other GMail user did receive a recent mail from me.) That has shaken my confidence in my email setup, which has run without issue for many years now. And I don't have any end-to-end tests, other than seeing people reply to my emails. I occasionally check my domain on various blacklist checkers.
  - vog 12y ago
    > That an obscure email service used by one of my clients doesn’t whitelist only major email providers? Can I be sure that things fail loudly when they don’t work? These are simply symptoms of FUD. Using that line of argument, you'll always end up with the biggest players, even though there is no technical reason to do so. > to implement some kind of monitoring that tests my self-hosted setup and alerts me by SMS On the other hand, how would you check that $BIGPLAYER's mail setup works with any other email service? You can't. Could you blame anybody at $BIGPLAYER? In a free service: No. So why would you want do put so much higher standard on your own setup than on $BIGPLAYER's setup? Just to be able to say: "Oh no, available technology is not good enough, I'm staying with $BIGPLAYER." This doesn't make any sense to me.
e12e 12y ago
I was unaware of LEAP, I assume you mean: https://leap.se/en/services/email https://leap.se/en/services/email ? Interesting approach, to use a local proxy to be able to transparently wrap legacy SMTP/IMAP with some added security and convenience beyond "just" GPG/PGP.

by kaffee 12y ago

vog 12y ago

>I'll be switching to [...] or self-hosting in the future I can really recommend self-hosted email. This is not as hard as it sounds. Of course, you should have the following abilities: 1) find some good documentation (or friend) that explains a clean setup with spam filter, correct DNS/SPF and HELO entries, such that you don't get on the blacklists. Note that this is almost a one-time effort, you'll have to adjust things every 5-10 years, I guess. [1] 2) be able to administrate a Linux/BSD machine, i.e. to keep it simple and up-to-date in the long term. I really hope that Tuxevara will finish his series about a modern email setup. This is his first part: http://www.tuxevara.de/2014/11/mailserver-reloaded-step-1/ http://www.tuxevara.de/2014/11/mailserver-reloaded-step-1/ [1] For example, I had to add SPF entries since my mailserver also had an IPv6 address, otherwise Google and others blocked me - for understandable reasons.

thyrsus 12y ago
Where does one host such a service such that one's neighbors haven't put your subnet on e-mail block lists? I wasn't able to host e-mail from my home IP address; do spammers not pollute the waters at hosting companies? Can you buy an IP address that isn't blacklisted, and won't be part of a subnet block?
- vog 12y ago
  Since there is so much malware out there delivering spam from private computers, dynamic IP ranges (which is what you usually get at home) are part of every modern blacklist. Yes, this is very unfortunate. It means that you'll either have to rent some server or virtual server (which makes sense if you want to run tons of other services there). Or, you'll need some VPN (possibly in addition to an IPv6 tunnel), which is cheaper. A third option is to rent an own server/vserver, but to keep the costs low by sharing it with friends.
goblin89 12y ago
> I can really recommend self-hosted email. This is not as hard as it sounds. For me the biggest hurdle is absolutely not the manual setup process or the need to adjust things from time to time. Rather, it’s the fact that there doesn’t seem to be a simple, quick and reliable way to tell if my setup actually works. How can I be sure that my email actually reaches its destination? That there’s no error in my DNS entries? That an obscure email service used by one of my clients doesn’t whitelist only major email providers? Can I be sure that things fail loudly when they don’t work? I really hope I’m wrong and it’s possible to implement some kind of monitoring that tests my self-hosted setup and alerts me by SMS if something’s wrong with it.
- pmahoney 12y ago
  I've self-hosted my email for years, and for the past 5 or so have had a stable IP address. I've got SPF records, but am missing DKIM. I've had no problems, but just recently I had two separate emails be ignored by GMail users. Some followup communication suggests to me the mails were never seen, but I am unable to find out if they ended up in the spam folder or not. (At least one other GMail user did receive a recent mail from me.) That has shaken my confidence in my email setup, which has run without issue for many years now. And I don't have any end-to-end tests, other than seeing people reply to my emails. I occasionally check my domain on various blacklist checkers.
- vog 12y ago
  > That an obscure email service used by one of my clients doesn’t whitelist only major email providers? Can I be sure that things fail loudly when they don’t work? These are simply symptoms of FUD. Using that line of argument, you'll always end up with the biggest players, even though there is no technical reason to do so. > to implement some kind of monitoring that tests my self-hosted setup and alerts me by SMS On the other hand, how would you check that $BIGPLAYER's mail setup works with any other email service? You can't. Could you blame anybody at $BIGPLAYER? In a free service: No. So why would you want do put so much higher standard on your own setup than on $BIGPLAYER's setup? Just to be able to say: "Oh no, available technology is not good enough, I'm staying with $BIGPLAYER." This doesn't make any sense to me.

e12e 12y ago

I was unaware of LEAP, I assume you mean: https://leap.se/en/services/email https://leap.se/en/services/email ? Interesting approach, to use a local proxy to be able to transparently wrap legacy SMTP/IMAP with some added security and convenience beyond "just" GPG/PGP.