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Comment by ungzd | Hacker News Reader

Google Wave was supposed to replace email.

But actually they replaced email with gmail. Now you can't send email from your own server because it will be blacklisted on gmail by default and noone on gmail will receive these emails. So you have to use "cloud email providers". On Android they changed "Email" client to "Gmail" client.

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I built my own mail server, and use it for every day communication. If you do everything correctly (mainly setting up DKIM and SPF), you get pretty much trusted by gmail automatically. You might have to make sure your IP address isn't already blacklisted, though I didn't have that problem.

Might have to give it a month or so to settle down aswell and instruct users to mark email as non-spam for automated emails (which helps)

Stop spreading FUD.

I've been running my own email server for a year without delivery issues to Gmail or Outlook/Office 365.

Just make sure your VPS IP is not blacklisted, and play the DKIM/etc game. You'll be fine.

It’s not that easy.

I’ve had proper DKIM, proper SPF, my IP wasn’t blacklisted anywhere.

But I still ended up in Spam.

So I had to send for about a year emails to friends every few days, replicating our discussions on WhatsApp etc (so they’d have organic content), and I’d ask them to mark them as "not spam".

Now I end up in their normal Inbox.

EDIT: Why the downvotes? Please comment instead what you think is wrong – or how else do you think I should get my personal domain trusted?

That is correct, the age of the domain and the "not spam" click matter a lot.

If you want a new domain and have little traffic (e.g. personal domain), you're fucked.

> EDIT: Why the downvotes? Please comment instead what you think is wrong – or how else you think I should get my personal domain trusted enough?

I don't understand the downvotes either. So I upvoted your comment to counteract them.

I've found myself doing that more and more lately. I'll upvote a comment I disagree with if it was made politely and in good faith, and it appears to be getting downvoted unfairly.

UPDATE: In case someone ever wants to know more details about why my server failed verification, here are checks for that domain I took when changing DKIM keys last (today):

http://i.imgur.com/9zqILRk.png

https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=blacklist%3akusc...

http://i.imgur.com/VIH4jlt.png

thanks for making me learn about mail-tester.com though you should probably obfuscate the email addresses in those images.

Don't worry — those email addresses in the images are public ones controlled by me.

I even have one of them in my HN profile if I recall correctly.

Thank you for this.

I plan to roll my own email server in the near future, due to legal and privacy concerns. As I understand it, in the US email archives aren't protected under the Fourth Amendment because they're asking for data from a third party, and the Fourth Amendment only applies to self-incrimination.

IANAL, but...

5th amendment is self-incrimination, 4th is unwarranted search and seizure.

I don't know the current law, but it used to be that e-mails left on a server for more than 6 months were treated like abandoned property, which has a lower-bar to clear for the 4th amendment. I seem to recall hearing that this was changed a while back though.

How the 4th amendment applies to any case is complicated though because it's very much a sliding scale of intrusiveness, with higher levels of intrusiveness requiring more cause for searching.

As I understand it, in the US email archives aren't protected under the Fourth Amendment

Currently, as I understand they are not. But, there is legislation [1] which proposes extending Fourth Amendment protection to e-mails and communication stored on your behalf on third party servers. I've already written to my Congressperson in support of that bill.

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/387/

Yeah, people can still run their own mail servers without too much work. I've had one for a couple years but I ran into issues with Google tagging my mail as spam at first. It was a while back but I think they want domain owners to verify their ownership with Google's webmaster tools.[1]

My server worked better after adding a TXT record with google-site-verification + all the normal DKIM stuff.

EDIT: here's a better link https://support.google.com/a/answer/183895?hl=en

[1] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35179?hl=en

The thing is, and this is the current state of email in general, aka not just google, using an email server other than from [big cloud], like say from my local ISP or a large shared hosting provider, you will run into issues. Usually fine, but every few months your (my) server's ip will randomly get blacklisted for a few days, and for a small biz you'll have customers occasionally not receive your email.

Random blacklisting maybe is less of an issue if you run your own server with a unique ip only you use, but for most people it's getting harder and harder not to use gmail/outlook/lycos.

So ya fuck spammers.

> Now you can't send email from your own server because it will be blacklisted on gmail by default

That's not correct. I tried sending e-mails using my own local SMTP server, and it comes to Gmail just fine. Not that it's a good idea in general.

Why do you say it's not a good idea?

Managing your own server is in general pretty hard (for sending or receiving). Unless you want to invest a lot of time in security and so on. It's simply way overwhelming. And if you don't invest in security, you are inviting trouble.

Sure. I've been running my own mail server for almost 20 years, but you seemed to imply that the bare act of sending email from a personal server to Gmail was a bad idea for some reason.

I've been running my own email server since... forever. In 1985 it was uucp ! paths and sendmail. I got a "for real" domain just for email in 1993, still over uucp dialup. DSL always on in 1999. But it does become harder as time goes on.

On the list of computing tasks I do every day, running my email server is WAY down there on the list of difficulty. Email servers are probably even easier than web servers.

Which doesn't necessarily mean you take necessary steps to seriously protect it. Or may be it means you are an expert and all that is trivial for you. But in general it's clearly not.

I guess my point is that you need to know your audience. Here on HN, running your own server is not a rare skill.

Ever heard of mail in a box[1] ? it does all this hard work for you.

[1]: https://mailinabox.email/

> Google Wave was supposed to replace email.

At least Wave was an open protocol including federation, even based on XMPP in fact. It maybe was the last thing before Google transitioned into a mostly walled garden.

> Now you can't send email from your own server because it will be blacklisted on gmail by default and noone on gmail will receive these emails.

I run a small mail server for some years now, no issues sending to gmail.

I run my own domain and mail server, no problems emailing major providers, including gmail.

I have been running my own mail server with no problem.

"On Android they changed "Email" client to "Gmail" client."

No, they didn't. Those are two separate apps. The Email one is part of AOSP. The Gmail one is part of Google Apps. Although many OEMs roll their own email client, as part of their custom skin.

On my Nexus 4, (Android 5.1.1), when I click on what used to be the email icon, I get a screen that says "Email has moved. The Gmail app now lets you view all of your email accounts." It has only one option (and a help link). That option is "TAKE ME TO THE GMAIL APP".

How do I get to the plain email client?

You install it

From where?

Same here. My personal mail server is running for 4 years. Never had problems being blacklisted by gmail.

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