Resisting the centralization of network infrastructure

Posted Aug 18, 2016 13:23 UTC (Thu) by jrigg (guest, #30848)
In reply to: Resisting the centralization of network infrastructure by eru
Parent article: Resisting the centralization of network infrastructure

> The solution is simply for users to host their own mail on their own boxes

Another reason this isn't a feasible solution for most is that the large web mail providers are increasingly rejecting any mail that doesn't come from their own or another large provider's servers. I run my own server hosted in a large data centre in London. It's not on any blacklist that I've checked, but I've had to resort to using web mail much of the time. The mail I send from my own server is typically received by the destination server but then disappears silently before reaching the addressee's inbox. I've seen comments from others around the web that suggest this is not uncommon.

Resisting the centralization of network infrastructure

Posted Aug 19, 2016 3:21 UTC (Fri) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link] (3 responses)

You probably don't have SPF, DKIM, etc. configured?

Google, Hotmail, etc. will happily accept without errors and then drop your mail if you don't have them configured.

Resisting the centralization of network infrastructure

Posted Aug 19, 2016 3:47 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (2 responses)

Yahoo will often drop your mail even if they're set up perfect. Hotmail isn't quite as bad. Gmail is pretty decent as long as you have already authenticated your domain with them.

Still, if you don't send much mail, and someone marks one of your messages spam, your entire domain can get in trouble quick. Good luck getting back off their secret blacklists.

Deliverability is hard!

Resisting the centralization of network infrastructure

Posted Aug 20, 2016 5:20 UTC (Sat) by gfa (guest, #53331) [Link]

I found that 2 - 3 years ago was almost impossible to deliver emails to gmail and hotmail from IP address in Argentina and Japan.
I had to send all my mail for those domains to the US before submit to hotmail/gmail.

After 1 - 2 years of continue usage of the Japan server gmail/hotmail started to take our emails, I'd say you need to do your homework (SPF, DKIM. PTR records, etc) and wait some time, people sending big volumes of email do something similar called IP warming.

I'm not talking about big volumes, 10 - 20 emails/day, an small company and personal email servers. SPF, DKIM, PTR records, etc.

Resisting the centralization of network infrastructure

Posted Aug 25, 2016 11:33 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> Yahoo will often drop your mail even if they're set up perfect. Hotmail isn't quite as bad. Gmail is pretty decent as long as you have already authenticated your domain with them.

I'm on Freegle (the UK version of Freecycle). I use a throwaway yahoo address, because Freegle are hosted on yahoo. Yet ALL my freegle mail is spambinned :-(

I use thunderbird, so I just tell it to download the spambin every day or so, but it's bl**dy annoying. AND YOU CAN'T TURN THE DAMN SPAMFILTER OFF!!! This account receives no spam whatsoever, which means the spam-filter is scoring a 100% ham-hit :-(

Cheers,
Wol