Just don't selfhost email
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2022
4 points (83.3% liked)
Run It Yourself
2976 readers
1 users here now
Overlaps somewhat with /c/floss_replacement and /c/privacy; crossposts welcome
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
Why?
Many ISP block the necessary ports outright to prevent someone sending spam. But even if not, rDNS is usually not supported and in general it is almost impossible to avoid being sorted out as spam by the large email providers.
I've been wondering about this on-and-off for years.
What if I didn't give a shit? Like, maybe 1% of my gmail emails are complete garbage. Of those 1%, absolutely all of them are responses to account signups or online ordering off of big websites. For those, I could continue to use my gmail account.
But, at this point, email's almost worthless for real communication. If I wanted it to be for real communication, why could I not set up my own email server that is configured such that it blocks all non-encrypted emails received? Just bounces them outright. This means that it instantly becomes a zero-spammable service for me. And the dozen or so friends/family I might want to receive emails from can just get accounts on it.
I understand (and want) it to be isolated from the greater email system. Is this possible?
And if others wanted to (for shits and giggles? dunno) become part of it, it'd be as simple for them to set up similarly configured email servers. You could even test them automatically that they were following the rules... send an unencrypted email to it, and if it doesn't bounce just blacklist them.
I guess there'd have to be some sort of public key infrastructure for it, no idea how to do that.
So the only issue is that you can't send emails to people using those providers?
In the best case yes. Although there are some providers that allow you to proxy outgoing SMTP connections through their highly trust rated servers. But that at point you might as well get a cheap email with your domain provider and only host other stuff from home. Less hassle.
Edit: a lot of email even if not immediately visible by the domain name is hosted by the large providers or uses a similarly strict spam filter. So IMHO it is almost impossible to avoid issues.
I think you could use a Tor proxy on your server to avoid sharing your IP. Or use a VPN.
Instant messaging should be OK over TOR as long as people aren't transmitting over a vast amount of data
It depends on your threat model, as always. Since your IP is linked to you, police and everyone else who can legally ask your provider something will know who you really are. This can be a non-issue in some country and for some use-cases, and could be really dangerous for someone else. But except for this it should not impact deeply your privacy, AFAIK, and having communications under your only complete control is always a good thing. I would only be careful to not link too much services to my only person, especially "social media".
Still, I would advice against hosting your email server for your primary mail, since it will probably cause too many problems (antispam and the like) with other big providers
I'm not trying to be anonymous or anything, I just hate not being in control of my own privacy from things snooping everything I do. e.g. using a windows computer, using whatsapp, google. etc. for communications.
Although one worry I have is my home address being public information.
At most you can get a general area from the IP, not your actual home address. Edit: unless you are the police of course.
The IP itself is less problematic to be public than some people make it sound. There isn't really much anyone could do with it that they wouldn't be able to do otherwise anyways.
Of course if you really need protect your identity, hosting stuff from home isn't recommended.
I've already quit trying to be invisible, I thought doing so would make my life easier but the opposite happened. I kept trying to find ways that are almost impossible to do. Things I want to do by nature is publicly involved.
So the IP just reveals general area of location, correct? Is there anything I want to worry about in my case?
Yes very hard to do in modern society. But reducing your digital footprint is still a good idea 😉
You can do a reverse search on the domain and IP and it will usually show which ISP and maybe the city or larger region you are in.
Also depending on the domain name, some require to have public contact details available. Some domain registers offer to proxy those however.
And .de domains don't show that information publicy but you still need to provide, in case you're doing something illegal and the police needs to know who you are
One thing:
Hosting email at home is not possible at all. Since you didn't rent a static IP address and set the inverse zone of your email domain, most public and common email servers will auto-block you.
It's not impossible -- if everyone starts doing it, then most public and common email servers cannot block them.
Self-hosting without applying these checks (which would involve signing a contract and exposing property data about the static IP address) is a thing used by spammers and they have the blocking automatized most times.
That's just not true. It is, some might say, ridiculously hard to do because these days there are so many i's to dot and t's to cross, but it's not impossible. A friend hosts his domains' email at home.
For that, that person must have been paid the static IP address.