Email is an open system, right? Anyone can send a message to anyone… unless they are on Gmail! School Interviews uses two email servers t…

  • flip@lemmy.nbsp.one
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    1 year ago

    And this is how you kill an open standard. Good resource to share with people cheering for Meta to adapt ActivityPub etc.

  • TheSaneWriter@vlemmy.net
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    1 year ago

    Yeah, I think this is done to provide the illusion of choice. The rate limits are high enough to allow personal emails through, but for any mass emails or corporate emails this forces you to use Google. Unfortunately a standard corporate strategy, it’s why corporate office suites are so generic and tend to be from one of the big companies.

    • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      When I went to the DMV my independent mail server was immediately filtered into spam when I tried to email them my proof of insurance. It was no trivial thing for them to get it out of the spam filter, either

    • The Doctor@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      This has been my observation as well. The lowest priority notifications from my exocortex use e-mail, and they don’t seem to have any trouble getting through. I haven’t tried to run a mailing list or anything like that, though, so it wouldn’t surprise me.

  • solarzones@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    1 year ago

    Thinking about starting my own personal email server, but to use it seriously I’ll have to weigh the pros and cons. If anyone has anything on this to share I’d appreciate it.

    • davehtaylor@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      1 year ago

      Short answer: Don’t.

      Long answer: It is a massive amount of work, not just to setup, but also to maintain. On top of the fact that the big email providers block smaller email servers like crazy. Even if you had business class Internet service at home, the IP range is most likely already in their block lists. And if you have it on a VPS, the amount of time and effort it takes to get the security and filtering going properly is nightmarish.

      It really sucks, but it’s a fait accompli.

      • Freeman@lemmy.pub
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Would agree.

        Even when done 100% by the book and correct. Companies like Google and Microsoft, in particular, will just randomly send the email to spam.

        I gave up after years of fighting the good fight and went to googles free tier. That is now over and I probably just need to move to some other service.

        Also dont use a gTLD or if you do, have a backup .com or .us as well. Many forms dont recognize things like .email as legit.

      • The Doctor@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Additionally, these days the sheer amount of flak that a self-hosted mail server gets are enough to make a lot of providers ask you to either shut it down or go somewhere else. Probably 80-90% of the server’s inbound network traffic will be bots trying to brute force access (usually over POP3 or IMAP4, though occasionally SSH) to use it as a spam relay as well as relatively dumb bots just assuming that your server is an open relay and trying to send garbage through it. That kind of traffic hogs a lot of bandwidth and the hosting provider will have to do something about it to keep their infrastructure stable. Also, figure that you’ll be spending about as much CPU time on the server for anti-spam processing on a 24x7 basis.

        I have to agree with other commenters, it’s just not worth the hassle and kinetic pattern baldness these days.

      • chris@l.roofo.cc
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Even if you set up everything perfectly you encounter email providers that only have allow lists and you have to jump through hoops to be allowed to send emails to them (like publishing your whole name and address). I loved the fact that I had a mail server but in the end it didn’t make sense.

  • Kaldo@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    Anyone got a different site covering this? This site’s HTTPS certificate is invalid or sth which doesn’t inspire confidence

  • skip0110@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    Anyone know a decent alternative at a reasonable price though? What if I have an @gmail today, and I want to move my storage elsewhere and have that just forward?

    • aebrer@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      I switched to ProtonMail and have really enjoyed it. I was using my own domain with Gmail so my email address didn’t even change.

      • sab@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        For those considering Proton Mail: There is one great benefit or disadvantage, depending on how you see it. As all traffic is encrypted, Proton Mail does not support standard IMAP or POP3. It’s therefore best used with the official Proton Mail app rather than third party apps. On desktop, you can use your favourite email client (Thunderbird et al) only if you install a “bridge” which decrypts incoming emails before forwarding them to the client: this bridge is, in turn, only available to paying subscribers.

        That said, it’s a great service, and the fact that they have a viable business model which doesn’t depend on selling out their users might be a good thing.

          • sab@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            Proton is end-to-end encrypted - they don’t have the keys themselves. With TLS, encryption is between you and the server, but the information can be decrypted on the server side.

            At least that’s my understanding of it. If you want Proton’s own words, they wrote an explanation on their website. :)

      • Kaldo@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Any advice or hints on how to switch over? I wanted to do it years ago but I dread having to change my main mail address on everything, from apps, tools and games to bills or RL document-related stuff, it sounds like a horrible mess and ton of work

        • aebrer@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          My recommendation (assuming you have a normal @gmail addy and not a custom domain like I had) would be to use email forwarding. So you can leave your Gmail as is, but set it up (in the settings) to automatically forward all your email to your new protonmail address. Then you can gradually change the important contacts/sites to your new email at your leisure.

          I do highly recommend buying a domain and setting up your own email address though, it gives you a lot more portability going forward. You can actually do a lot with your own domain, and it helps you maintain trust better.

          Anyway, enough preaching lol, protonmail also maintains a guide to help people switch: https://proton.me/easyswitch

          • dorkian-gray@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            1 year ago

            If you’re recommending setting up a forward/IMAP collection from a Gmail account, don’t forget to mention deleting the messages from the server as well! Emails left on a server for more than 30 days are considered “abandoned property” for the purposes of warrantless search.

              • pjhenry1216@kbin.social
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                The most I could find is that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act allows for warrants to be issued for emails less than 180 days old. I’ve found vague references and snippets from articles no longer available that seem to claim some acts that have passed since then allow for simple subpoenas instead of full on warrants for said emails, but 180 days is the only threshold I’ve found and again, it’s for less than 180 days that’s at danger.

    • jabakobob@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      My recommendation for everyone is to use Fastmail and a custom domain.

      Fastmail is extremely reliable, and since they charge money they also offer customer support. A few years ago I lost a lot of emails due to a client bug, and Fastmail support was very helpful recovering them from backup.

      Use a custom domain so you can change providers in the future so you’re not locked into your provider and can change if you aren’t happy with them anymore.

      • Greg Clarke@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        I’m also using fastmail and I’m happy with them. Their native android email client is a little clunky but I still use it and I have the option to use other mail clients too.

    • Chobbes@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I feel like step 1 is just buying a domain so you can have control over your e-mail address, and then you can switch providers whenever you want (or host it yourself).

      If you already pay for extra iCloud storage you can use a custom domain for e-mail with iCloud… Many people are already paying for this, and if not it’s only $1/mo. Apple’s still a pretty big e-mail provider, so maybe that doesn’t address all of your concerns, but it’s a really cheap way to use a custom domain that more people should take advantage of imo.

      I host my own e-mail and it’s pretty care free these days (I don’t send bulk e-mails, though, so I don’t contend with rate limits at all). Honestly, more people should do it instead of buying into all of the fearmongering about e-mail… It’s a little tricky to set up right, but the impossibleness of the situation is somewhat exaggerated. The best defense for self-hosted e-mail is if more people actually do it… Otherwise you’re just capitulating to the large (and slightly less large) mail providers.

      • Beej Jorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        +1 on having your own domain. I was using gmail for a long time, and recently switched to my hosting provider’s included-with-purchase email. Having my own domain made the move transparent to everyone, and relatively painless.

  • elgordio@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    In my experience Office 365 is even harder to deliver to. The email envelope can be in perfect shape and sent via sendgrid (their recommended partner) and it will still silently drop mails for no obvious reason and if it does deign to deliver them it will often mark them junk.

    I’m only sending low volume transactional emails. The amount of time I have to spend tweaking the email content just to persuade Microsoft to deliver the mail is absurd.

    • 1993_toyota_camry@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      In my experience Office 365 is even harder to deliver to.

      Yep, this is my experience as well.

      I’ve had some issues with google, but at least they tend to tell me the messages are being rejected.

      Microsoft will give me a 250 message, and then route the message to /dev/null.

      That’s contrary to the RFCs, and really annoying. Since it doesn’t end up in Junk, the receiver can’t say ‘not junk’, and since it doesn’t bounce, the sender thinks it has been sent.

      I’m signed up for Microsofts junk mail reporting, and when this happens the UI shows no issues with my ip, and doesn’t admit to any e-mail filtering. The only way I can detect it is by sending messages to my test accounts, or waiting for users to yell.

      Fwiw, anyone else who runs in to this scenario, expect your first support ticket with microsoft to be rejected. Keep responding to it. On the second or third try they might end up removing the silent ban.

  • Mothra
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Could someone please ELI5 this? I get the overall concept but I don’t really understand why doing this is convenient for them.

    • Link.wav [he/him]@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      They stand to benefit by having a de facto monopoly over email by exploiting their position as one of the biggest email providers in the world

      “Monopoly” may not be the right word since Microsoft and Yahoo! also seem to be engaging in similar anti-consumer practices, but basically they seek to end the days of independently hosted email providers, which is obviously not good for us