Everything Else

Have not been all that satisfied with my apple @me.com service lately... it really bugs out their own mail program, which I do like to use. Have to delete and re add the account every once in a while to get it to send anything. I have a gmail account for work (same service that our parent company uses for all their employees) and that is even worse than apple. So don't suggest that. Also an exchange account from the alma mater still chugging along (mainly spam but I still have a few contacts who use it...) at least gmail and exchange work fine with apple mail on osx...

I've also wanted a new ddns since dyndns dropped their free service and I lost my account. Anybody here (preferably usa-based?) use noip for ddns and/or email, and how is it? Would I be better off running my own server? Seems overkill tho I do have an almost-always-on machine...

My ISP charges an extra $10/mo for static IP tho I think there are a few other things that come with it. Would rather spend $10/year

I've been happy with GMX.com as a free IMAP email provider that plays well with Apple Mail. I don't know if it makes a difference, but they are a subsidiary of a German firm, and at least once upon a time, they touted their privacy policies as being more oriented toward EU notions of privacy than US gov't ones. Of course, the US subsidiary has to play by US rules, but maybe the EU lineage makes a difference on the margins.

(I also have Gmail, Exchange, and other accounts elsewhere.)

Edit: I forgot to mention, their webmail interface is quirky, but not bad, once you get used to it. Unfortunately, it is supported by schlocky, cheesy ads for nutritional supplements, Thai women "who want to meet you!", and so on. The site works fine with AdBlock enabled, though. In any case, I access it through IMAP 95% of the time.

guardian452 wrote: Have not been all that satisfied with my apple @me.com service lately...

Do you have a local ISP with a brain and email service ? I know, costs more but it might be worth it.

Would I be better off running my own server? Seems overkill tho I do have an almost-always-on machine...

Did this for several years, running the server was easy and nowadays you could do it on a very low-power box that wouldn't cost anything.

The problems I had were all from the other end : "It's from China ! Omigod, must be spam !"

Stupid dipshits. This was a correctly set up mail server with reverse spiffydiff and everything. The people running mail servers are so fucking stupid. You won't believe it until you try.

If you are lucky they can handle mail from the US but if you run dynamic dns, you may have the same problem.

My ISP charges an extra $10/mo for static IP tho I think there are a few other things that come with it. Would rather spend $10/year

If you are interested in VOIP, VPN, or any other functions, a static IP is really nice. It would help with the mail server situation, for example. Plenty of morons just blacklist any dynamic ip right off the bat.

Tinfoil hat time : (but it's the truth) - the entire Spam ! Spam ! Spam ! How can we control spam ? thing is just a shuck to remove control of the internet from individuals and place it in the hands of "content providers". Shut up, serf, and take what we give you.

It would be trivial to stop spam right at the source. No normal human being sends out 465,000 emails an hour. Any ISP can detect a spammer within five minutes. If they really wanted, they could stop it at the source with no muss, no fuss.

But they don't want and never have wanted. What they really wanted and what they got is to remove control of our lives from our hands and place it in theirs.

And we went for it. Google goes through all email they handle. "Big Data" to quote the Big Bitch. There's not a tyrant in the history of mankind who wouldn't sacrifice his entire family tree for that power. We are fools.

hamei wrote:

guardian452 wrote: Have not been all that satisfied with my apple @me.com service lately...

Do you have a local ISP with a brain and email service ? I know, costs more but it might be worth it.

Yes, actually I have a @fioptics.com email account which I never use, better yet, the username I registered is just my initials, which is pretty nice. I completely forgot about that option, but I will definitely check it out!

hamei wrote:

Would I be better off running my own server? Seems overkill tho I do have an almost-always-on machine...

Did this for several years, running the server was easy and nowadays you could do it on a very low-power box that wouldn't cost anything.

The problems I had were all from the other end : "It's from China ! Omigod, must be spam !"

Stupid dipshits. This was a correctly set up mail server with reverse spiffydiff and everything. The people running mail servers are so fucking stupid. You won't believe it until you try.

If you are lucky they can handle mail from the US but if you run dynamic dns, you may have the same problem.

My ISP charges an extra $10/mo for static IP tho I think there are a few other things that come with it. Would rather spend $10/year

If you are interested in VOIP, VPN, or any other functions, a static IP is really nice. It would help with the mail server situation, for example. Plenty of morons just blacklist any dynamic ip right off the bat.

Definitely, tho I just want it for VPN. If a mail server is as easy as you say, then...

hamei wrote: Tinfoil hat time : (but it's the truth) - the entire Spam ! Spam ! Spam ! How can we control spam ? thing is just a shuck to remove control of the internet from individuals and place it in the hands of "content providers". Shut up, serf, and take what we give you.

It would be trivial to stop spam right at the source. No normal human being sends out 465,000 emails an hour. Any ISP can detect a spammer within five minutes. If they really wanted, they could stop it at the source with no muss, no fuss.

But they don't want and never have wanted. What they really wanted and what they got is to remove control of our lives from our hands and place it in theirs.

And we went for it. Google goes through all email they handle. "Big Data" to quote the Big Bitch. There's not a tyrant in the history of mankind who wouldn't sacrifice his entire family tree for that power. We are fools.

That's why I only use my work gmail for work-related purposes, I wish the company ran their own mail at least, but a lot of places are doing gmail now... makes the IT guy's job easier I guess idiots... I don't really trust apple all that much, either. Although, I get the feeling they are in it for the money. Not nefarious there.

guardian452 wrote: Although, I get the feeling they are in it for the money. Not nefarious there.

Money = power. It's but a small step for man ... Who said, "Control their stomachs and their hearts and minds will follow ..." ?

Anyway, if you want to do your own, for a small group, this thing is a joy :

http://www.pmoylan.org/pages/os2/Weasel.html

It's a chopper, man. 16 and 21, 4 over and no tassels. Grab your colors and start splittin lanes

I'm actually one of those nuts who runs their own mail server. I'll never go back.

But I've heard good stuff from people on Fastmail.

ClassicHasClass wrote: I'm actually one of those nuts who runs their own mail server. I'll never go back.

I'm in this camp. *strokes beard*

Har. It wasn't 2 minutes after I bought the static IP service our internet went out because of storms and has been out all day (over 12 hours) the whole area is affected, not just me. So I think hosting my own is out Also, Mail couldn't connect to the imap.fioptics.com server for half the day when I was at work.

Yeah, this is where having a home T1 and an SLA is a Damn Good Thing, plus a friend in the Bay Area I can mailpeer with. My power's been out for longer stretches than my network has (typically repaired same day, even on weekends).

As long as you have a backup server having your local server go down isn't such a big problem. I have DtDNS service but Cox is pretty consistent with their IPs in my location and it only changes when you change modem.

I run a Zimbra server and it's pretty simple and the spam filtering is decent enough.

Another "self hosted" option is to get a cheap web server service or VPS and run a mail server on that. Either that or just use your domain registrar's service if they have one.

Having your home server go offline isn't a problem anyway, because mail sending gets retried if it can't be delivered. This is the basis of graylisting, if you recall.

duck wrote: Having your home server go offline isn't a problem anyway, because mail sending gets retried if it can't be delivered. This is the basis of graylisting, if you recall.

Yeah for people it works fine but for those autogenerated messages they tend to retry less...

I've thought about an Amazon instance as a backup cloud mail transfer point, but I just don't care enough yet.

ClassicHasClass wrote: ... I just don't care enough yet.

Exactly. If you're in a blizzard and the electric goes off, who cares if the emails get delayed ? Just light the kerosene lamps and go do what people did back in the dark ages

Just looked at Cyrus again ... Jesus, guardian, put OS/2 on a little box and download Weasel. This yewnix stuff is awful

forget cyrus, look at dovecot.

robespierre wrote: forget cyrus, look at dovecot.

Thanks, Robes, just in time. I was just starting to bring up cyrus again, forgot how disgusting all this is. Will report back on whether dovecot is as bad.

Oops :

Assumptions
* Each mail account served by Dovecot, has a local user account defined on the server.

Well, that didn't last long ...

wikischmedia wrote: Dovecot is an open source IMAP and POP3 server for Linux/UNIX-like systems, written primarily with security in mind

This makes me wonder ... why do people care about "security" ? If it goes through Google or Yahoo or Hotmail, the NSA and their secret rubberstamp "judges" plus every commercial organization on earth has access to everything you write. They even store it for future reference and claim copyrights on your mail.

So why not just write it on the bathroom walls down at the Y ? WTF is the difference ?

Exactly why I question the effectiveness of encrypting mail in the general sense. Unless you know it's going point-to-point where it's not going to get tampered with, someone is going to read it, somewhere (or store it to try to read it later -- which the NSA is already documented to have done).

there are schemes called "forward secrecy" (or, redundantly, "perfect forward secrecy") that are designed to prevent that type of prospective ciphertext storage. the idea is that a conversation takes place in or near real-time, and after each step, the secret that authenticates the previous chain of steps is published. so once the recipient has received and opened a message, and used that step's secret to verify it, the protocol makes future authentication of the message impossible.

robespierre wrote: forget cyrus, look at dovecot.

dovecot 1.x was small, light and nice; it has lately unfortunately gone rather bloated. (though there's to my knowledge no better alternative) :-/

Welp... my ISP is still out :/ the only other option here is twc/comcast so it's not like I have a choice.