# Email services - your opinion?



## SrsX (Dec 13, 2013)

What is your opinion on email services? Personally since the whole NSA-spying was leaked I switched off of US-based email providers. For me I went over to bitmessage.ch; the only down-side is the long email address it generates and if you loose it you can't recover it.

Thoughts?


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## MartinD (Dec 13, 2013)

Who gives a shit.

</thought>


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## scv (Dec 13, 2013)

E...mail? What is that?


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## blergh (Dec 13, 2013)

Host your own.


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## Mun (Dec 13, 2013)

Even if it is out of the US there is still possibilities that the NSA will pick it up. You are doing nothing to protect yourself, other then actually giving them legal grounds to look at it more "closely".

Mun


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## cubixcloud (Dec 13, 2013)

Run your own server or signup for email service somewhere. My thoughts are what does it matter if you have nothing to hide? Most broadband providers are subjected to CALEA anyway so not a big deal. Keep it clean and you have nothing to worry about.


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## drmike (Dec 13, 2013)

I care / give shit.  Mooonure...

I still am sitting on sidelines about email.   Certainly as-is, is busted.   Frankly, email needs a massive overhaul.  

We need P2P email or just build upon chat type technologies.

Putting email abroad means certainly the NSA is sniffing your stuff on international fiber runs.

Theoretically, way to starve them some is to have multiple inbound servers out there that are geolocated.  So mail from abroad gets received abroad.  Upon receipt, all crypto on storage.   Only access the actual server through multiple nested tunnels that are crypted with various encryption methods.

The whole who cares, I am boring thing just is an excuse not to care.  It's like saying I don't care if the police stop me while outdoors and proceed to anally probe me.  Why should I care, I am not a drug mule...


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## javaj (Dec 13, 2013)

Mun said:


> Even if it is out of the US there is still possibilities that the NSA will pick it up. You are doing nothing to protect yourself, other then actually giving them legal grounds to look at it more "closely".
> 
> Mun



Pretty much... years ago I had a friend who dropped his gmail account saying he didn't trust them, got and paid for a hushmail account thinking it was much more private and secure, granted they were US based, but he thought being hushmail it was going to ensure his privacy being super secure. I told him even back then there had to be backdoors in it... he didn't believe me, then a year later it comes out they were working with the feds.

Kinda sucks but the only way to have more privacy today is just saying screw it and just stay under the radar along with millions of others out there. Going out of your way today looking for more privacy just seems to draw more unnecessary attention to yourself.



drmike said:


> I care / give shit.  Mooonure...
> 
> I still am sitting on sidelines about email.   Certainly as-is, is busted.   Frankly, email needs a massive overhaul.
> 
> ...



And I agree, its the apathetic who have been gobbling up all the patriotic bullshit that got us into this mess in the first place.


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## willie (Dec 13, 2013)

bitmessage (bitmessage.org) looks interesting, and I've been wondering if vps hosts are likely to permit it.  bitmessage.ch is bitmessage running on a server.

Certainly all SMTP traffic should be encrypted if possible.  The trouble is spam has pretty much killed email unless you're a huge operation with 24/7 staffing, and filtering running on all the traffic.  So that centralizes it to places like gmail.  Remember it's not just your own server that has to be secure--the other person's does too, and most aren't.


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## dano (Dec 13, 2013)

I run my mail off a vps these days, migrating away from gmail. Personally, I like to run my own stuff, and did so prior to gmail, so now I a just going back to my old ways I guess, and I like my domain name better


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## BuzzzHost (Dec 14, 2013)

We will be providing private email hosting starting the 1st of the year.


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## InertiaNetworks-John (Dec 14, 2013)

We host our own. Zimbra.


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## wlanboy (Dec 14, 2013)

I still have a google mail account for all the boards and newsletters.

And I do have a paid email account for bank/job/contracts.

All my private stuff and mx for my domains are 

I don't want to put my communication in one basket.


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## fixidixi (Dec 14, 2013)

if u worry about security.. well dont use email, dont use mobile phones etc. but u should consider if being 'secure' worth it..


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## NodeBytes (Dec 14, 2013)

Gmail. I have years and years of archived emails which is nice because I can look up anything and I know it will be their. Also, the plugins and automation make life much easier. I can auto tag using filters and create rules for how my emails function once received.


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## nunim (Dec 14, 2013)

I feel it's too difficult/too much of a hassle to host an SMTP server these days.   With all the SBL, RBL, IP reputation lists, etc.. provider lists, it's almost impossible to keep all email going where it should.   A lot of time it's the customers fault for their mail being rejected but I have seen large IP ranges listed on reputation lists, I know that MIPSpace has a /16 of Singlehop's listed at the moment causing rejects to any mailserver using BarracudaNetworks Firewall.

If you're hosting SMTP on your own VPS, chances are your IP is not in any reputation lists and if you're not sending too much mail, it can take quite a long time to build up a decent Rep. and ensure proper delivery to places like Outlook.com.  If you want to run your own inbound it's no problem but I feel it's better to outsource SMTP to an email provider like SendGrid etc..

Personally I run GApps. for all my mail but I'm not too concerned with the NSA, sure they can see all my data but so can Google and they're the ones more likely to use it.  It works, it's free (I have an older account) and I never have to worry about my mail ending up in SPAM or being bounced back.


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## wlanboy (Dec 15, 2013)

nunim said:


> I feel it's too difficult/too much of a hassle to host an SMTP server these days.   With all the SBL, RBL, IP reputation lists, etc.. provider lists, it's almost impossible to keep all email going where it should.


Second that.

For a private email it is ok. But noone should under estimate the effort to run a mail server.


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## bluebit (Dec 15, 2013)

How do you recommend handling redundancy in hosting your own email?


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## Echelon (Dec 16, 2013)

bluebit said:


> How do you recommend handling redundancy in hosting your own email?


You can easily do so by running multiple servers. Depending on how elaborate of a setup you want to go for, it could be as simple as using a secondary store-and-forward mail server for handling emails when your primary is unreachable, all the way to replication of emails across multiple servers. Then you'd simply add additional MX records on your domain accordingly.

Not really hard to sort, but at the end of the day, it depends how much legwork you'd like to put into it.


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## cubixcloud (Dec 16, 2013)

bluebit said:


> How do you recommend handling redundancy in hosting your own email?


From a stand point of mx spooling you can setup as many spoolers as you need. With VPSes so affordable now days you can spin up 2 to 3 1GB or 2GB spoolers across different providers or one provider with multiple locations.

We like to use Postfix/CentOS combo with Amavis-new/clamd/spamassasin. There is always mailscanner as well which is similar in a way.

Once that is done then simply decide if you want to have one mailbox server or a cluster. You could store your email in database and cluster it that way. The solutions are limitless, however, we'd recommend storing email in DB. Keep in mind you need to secure and tune your DB for heavy load. We recently started deploying mail solutions for clients via Postfix/MySQL.


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## wlanboy (Dec 16, 2013)

bluebit said:


> How do you recommend handling redundancy in hosting your own email?


Backup MX should care about the "what happens if someone is sending me something and my mail server is down".

Everything else is handled by a daily backup.


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## k0nsl (Dec 16, 2013)

Isn't that a terrible way to reason...*“what does it matter if you have nothing to hide?”*

A terrible example using such reasoning as yours would be to say something along the lines of ‘okay, you might be convicted of paedophilia, but you can babysit my children, just don't molest them.’ Ya, a terrible example, but it is the same sort of reasoning.

The point is no government should spy on it’s citizens. What this means is that the government does not trust you. It is all reminiscent of NKVD methods. But I am sure that if you didn't have anything to hide, you weren't sent to their Lubyanka den, for a bit of 'interrogation'.

Oh well, nothing personal. I just find it strange, and always hated surveillance - especially when I as an non-American can even be the victim of it.

Regards,

-k0nsl



cubixcloud said:


> Run your own server or signup for email service somewhere. My thoughts are what does it matter if you have nothing to hide? Most broadband providers are subjected to CALEA anyway so not a big deal. Keep it clean and you have nothing to worry about.


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