Own-Mailbox (hardware self-hosted encrypted mailbox) | Hacker News Reader

Own-Mailbox (hardware self-hosted encrypted mailbox)

own-mailbox.com

14 pointsxgbi8 comments

This... seems questionable. For starters, running your own email server is tough; it's not a simpler setup like a webserver, because you have to deal with spam and/or being treated as spam. And all sorts of stuff matters - DNS config and uptime for example are factors used.

Second, most residential ISP's do not allow you to run your own server from your connection.

Third, it's not about a device. A raspberry pi can work just as well. Maybe a device is easy to get up on kick starter or something, but i really see no specialty need there.

So... I don't see the point of this really except as a money grab on kickstarter.

What we need (as i see it) is better OSS options for running your own mail server. I run my own Zimbra server and have to reboot it via cron to keep it running. Going the manual route would work, but takes more time than I have interest in. Maybe someone could point out some alternatives that are quick to setup but still powerful?

I use iredmail for my personal server. It does the work of configuring postfix and dovecot for you and allows you to make any changes you wish. I host it on digital ocean.

Still I think this could be a interesting idea, you'd have to change the way we think about email, but everyone having their own dedicated, always on device rather the google holding on to all of them has to have an impact on privacy.

For starters, running your own email server is tough

For personal use this isn't true if you're reasonally comfortable with linux. I have been running my own email server for years with little maintenance apart from the occasional apt-get update.

Going the manual route would work, but takes more time than I have interest in.

It takes about a day and you get to learn more about email. Its not a big deal.

"Private link message" is really stupidly designed: when the recipient clicks the link, it is invalidated.

No "let's see what this is, maybe better answer later" and even worse: you're denying the recipient his very own mail archive.

I don't really see how this is stupidly designed: you can very well warn the recipient that the link is "one access" only.

This kind of thing is already used with things like DropBox or Synology DSM for instance. In the messaging world, Snapchat works that way, and they're doing pretty well.

That doesn't change much.

This is not "email", as everyone understands it. It's another quasi-closed messaging system. Granted, if your communication partners are technically well-versed, they can live with it and get around its limitations.

To the general public it's not email, but the destruction of it.

It's just one feature added to the whole, normal email system.

Just like an attachment.

This looks extremely similar to the kinko project (https://kinko.me/the-kinko-project/), although the latter failed its crowdfunding.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com