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Comment on Isn't having your own domain name for email very bad for privacy? And how do you pick a good domain name that doesn't sound goofy?

dhork@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

I know a lot of people with their own domain names and email servers. From a privacy perspective, it is better because you know nobody is reading your emails. Your email address is a method to track regardless. But free email services are only free because they scrape your emails to figure out which ads to send. If you run your own mail server, you know no one is snooping.

The real issue is that you need to be fastidious about security, because your servers are exposed to the broader Internet and there are a lot of bad actors. You not only have to make sure your server doesn’t get hacked, but you also need to make sure the mail server application can’t act like an open relay. Spammers use misconfigured mail servers all the time to send tons of spam messages using someone else’s bandwidth.

And once your mail server is used as a spam relay, it might get IP blocked from major email providers, and I bet that is a pain to get resolved.

So it’s only worth it if you know what you are doing.

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deranger@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

you know nobody is reading your emails

Can’t they be read by someone who’s compromised whatever server the other person is using? Since email isn’t encrypted, couldn’t anyone who picked up the traffic on the way to your server also read that email?

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- Successful_Try543@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Yes, essentially, an email is the digital equivalent of a postcard.
  
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- dhork@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Yeah, individual emails can be picked off at any point in the chain while in transit. And someone who has hacked key infrastructure in front of your server can see all emails on transit. But your server might have stored emails, so someone with clandestine access to that will be able to access part of your email history (perhaps all of it, if you use that server for permanent email storage), and they are not limited to emails in transit.
  
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IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

The real issue is that you need to be fastidious about security, because your servers are exposed to the broader Internet and there are a lot of bad actors. You not only have to make sure your server doesn’t get hacked, but you also need to make sure the mail server application can’t act like an open relay. Spammers use misconfigured mail servers all the time to send tons of spam messages using someone else’s bandwidth.

I’m planning on just using a encrypted mail provider and just using the custom domain, so I don’t have to actually manage the email myself.

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