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Comment by copper4eva | Hacker News Reader

His comment did not even mention the US. Only critiquing the authoritarianism going on in the EU. One of the issues with modern politics is everyone wants to deflect.

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I need to host my emails somewhere. This means that you can't reject the EU in isolation, you have to compare it to the alternatives. And the most prevalent alternative is the US

Now of course if somebody has a better alternative that's neither in the EU nor US (nor Russia, or China) that'd be interesting to hear about

Switzerland, maybe? I've been a happy migadu.com customer for years already.

Funny enough, they mention moving to ProtonMail which is at least based out of Switzerland. It makes this whole chain a bit funny, but I don't blame the commenter for not breaking down every service the OP talked about and the OP did shorthand it to "Migrating to the EU", so fair enough.

Servers of migadu are in france actually

Yeah, you are right. It's a bit buried in their docs.

Didn't proton fold like a wet napkin when they were asked for information about their users? What I mean is: Switzerland as a whole is probably the wrong metric...

Switzerland - as well as EU based providers - have to comply with court orders. And the EU as well as Switzerland issue court orders upon request from friendly foreign states ("Rechtshilfeersuchen" in german) - such as the US.

Wasn't Proton launched as a "your data is encrypted at rest, we could never access it without your consent"? The implication being that even if they received said court orders, they didn't have anything to give. Am I misremembering that?

They encrypt your data insofar as your email, files, etc. but that doesn't mean they don't have information potentially useful to the authorities. See the recent headline where they revealed a user's payment information allowing them to be identified.

These are also political decisions and the EU is much more powerful politically than Switzerland so if your adversary is the US and they're willing to use lawfare or more than you should probably go with the EU and not Switzerland. Germany is considered one of the most robust legal systems for privacy.

But there is always risk no matter what you do.

Anywhere you can rent a VPS or dedicated server, install exim or mox or mailcow. Configure dns correctly and you're good to go

In email world, this is as far from 'good to go' as you can get. Good luck getting anyone to read your emails this way.

Do you run your email server? I run two, have next to no problems (the key is in setting up DNS correctly, as I mentioned) and keep getting told this by people who have never tried.

More elaboration on what’s involved in “correctly” would probably drive the point home — “this works because” vs “works for me.”

I made sure to include the word correctly in the reply. Mox mailserver tells you exactly what to do. I think mailcow does as well. A lot of people don't do it and then tell others that selfhosting email with good deliverability is impossible. You set it up once and you're good to go

It depends on whether your IP address has good reputation or not. Don't act like we're idiots, we know what SPF, DKIM and DMARC are. We've seen perfect e-mails (rated 100/100 by deliverability services) get rejected by Microsoft because reasons.

You were lucky, congratulations.

> It depends on whether your IP address has good reputation or not

Addressed in another comment "I wouldn't try it from a residential IP but as long as you run a blacklist check on the IP before you start".

> Don't act like we're idiots, we know what SPF, DKIM and DMARC are.

If you read one comment higher in the thread instead of reacting emotionally, I was specifically asked to elaborate on what the correct DNS meant. Please don't act like those who don't know are idiots.

> We've seen perfect e-mails (rated 100/100 by deliverability services) get rejected by Microsoft because reasons.

No, you haven't.

> You were lucky, congratulations.

What do you call consistent luck? In my case 14 years across 6 different sending domains, 4 different servers with four different hosts using two different MTAs?

> No, you haven't.

I mean I have seen 100/100 on https://mail-tester.com/ get rejected by Microsoft, yes, but feel free to call me a liar if that helps you feel better.

I've just noticed you're the guy who said that people were migrating away from US services "because it's trending"; you're obviously a self-satisfied pillock and I won't engage in further discussion with your tedious online personality

Do any of your emails actually make it into an inbox though? I did this for a server and I couldn't even get it to land in spam on gmail.

Yes but you may need the IPs to warm up and build some reputation, depending where you setup your server the IPs may be burned. Check logs and reputation with some of the postmaster tools the major providers offer and with the services that allow looking up an IP. senderscore used to be convenient to use now it displays a stupid contact form when you try to check an IP, there are others.

To be honest I haven't done the setup for sending a handful of emails but IPs sending hundreds/thousands per day it's fine as long as you don't start spamming people and get flagged.

Yes they do. I wouldn't try it from a residential IP but as long as you run a blacklist check on the IP before you start, and configure DNS correctly, it's generally fine.

The post is about moving stuff from US to EU, so it's not like the US is brought up out of nowhere.

The comment does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in a thread where the topic is, eminently, migrating away from US services to EU ones.

>The comment does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in a thread where the topic is, eminently, migrating away from US services to EU ones.

Even then, there's no interesting conversation to be had unless we pretend it does.

I, and apparently many others in this thread, disagree.

I personally found some interesting comments here, including but not limited to services based off EU that I can use.

If you find it uninteresting, you should stop wasting your time in it and go do something more productive with your time.

Unless, of course, you just want to do some "concern trolling". You know, the "just asking questions" and "just noticing" behavior.

I'll be charitable and presume you are talking in this thread accidentally, and will find your way to more productive activities instead.

> critiquing the authoritarianism going on in the EU

What?

It's happening in the EU too, just not at such a fast pace than in other regions. And it's still far away from authoritarianism.

Currently it's just smaller pieces and no bigger agenda is visible (or even exiting). But there are constantly new regulations that would make an authoritarian coup (like currently in the US) easier.

There's a ton of disinformation in right-wing media in the USA that the EU is either already an authoritarian police state, or rapidly becoming one.

For example: https://www.heritage.org/europe/commentary/europe-wants-be-t...

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