Selfhost masked email service? reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vinhdizzo · 2023-09-27 16:23 Hi, I recently came across [this](https://tmp.bearblog.dev/how-i-stay- reasonably-anonymous-online/) post to stay reasonably anonymous online. The author suggests using masked email addresses, with Firefox Relay, Fastmail, and iCloud+ as sample providers. I currently use the duckduckgo address generator, and I like it. However, I'm always fearful of such services going away. I know it's well documented in this sub that hosting your own email service is a lost cause (due to complexity and your service being deemed spam by others), but I'm curious if anyone selfhosts a service just for creating masked email addresses, and receiving the emails in one account (or forwarded to a gmail account). I figure since these addresses won't be used for sending, that things might be simpler. Thanks in advance for your insights. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- certTaker · 2023-09-27 16:47 Forwarding is unreliable because sender's SPF policy comes into play and the destination (gmail or whatever) may drop the email. You need to put the forwarded email into a new envelope and send it to the destination so you will be dealing with IP reputation anyway. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jusepal · 2023-09-27 16:54 Theres simplelogin, anonaddy too. Both can be selfhosted. Relaying is also sending so gotta setup proper dkim, dmarc, spf for it to be reliable. And gotta setup rdns for the ip. Ip reputation also gotta be clean. Basically gotta ensure proper setup like a full blown selfhosted mail even for "just" relaying. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- crusader-kenned · 2023-09-27 17:07 +1 for SimpleLogin, i have Been using (not selfhosted) it for two years now. I think there is a little more to this than simply forwarding mails to your existing mail and they solve it in a convenient way and at a reasonable price. The important part is to use a custom domain that way you can always leave and still retain control of all the aliases you have created. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- talent_deprived · 2023-09-27 18:21 I don't have an answer for your main question but want to address this: \> it's well documented in this sub that hosting your own email service is a lost cause (due to complexity and your service being deemed spam by others) No it is not a lost cause, anyone stating so is either misinformed or has an alternative agenda to discourage selfhosters from hosting their own email. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Boring-Wednesdays · 2023-09-27 21:21 Simple login has a guide on github on how to self host it. But a quick note on self hosting forwarders, this has the possibility of exposing your home IP if its not behind a VPN or hosted on a VPS. Additionally you'd need a custom domain name which may or may not point to your home IP if the A record isn't proxied. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- superglue_chute115 · 2023-09-27 23:36 To avoid confusion, AnonAddy has been renamed to Addy.io, which is subjectively a worse name but oh well. Simple login has served me well for a few years now, love it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- muxketeer · 2023-09-27 23:58 Yeah, but I feel like self hosting an e-mail server and the maintenance that slowly builds could *really* suck the fun out of what I do for my hobby. So, I leave email to external services. My 2 cents. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- talent_deprived · 2023-09-28 01:12 I like that maintenance, I guess we all have different ideas of fun and how we want to spend or not spend our money or keep or give up control of our lives. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- death_hawk · 2023-09-28 01:24 I'm curious how you overcome the spam issue? (Not receiving spam, but others considering your email to be spam) I've passed all the DKIM, SPF, DMARC, with an IP that I've had for years with warmup and with no spam reputation from anyone and I still get rejected by certain providers. I would love to host my own email, but I can't overcome automatically being marked as spam. I signed up with a 3rd party sending as a service type outfit (that I won't name so it doesn't look like I'm shilling) on their free tier for that matter and I get no outbound issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- talent_deprived · 2023-09-28 01:54 Check these guys out, they have some nice tools that may help you look into it more: [http://www.mxtoolbox.com/](http://www.mxtoolbox.com/) Why do I not have issues? I can think of only one thing I do different, if a provider blocks my email, happened one time in 20 years, I used their ticket system to report the issue and it was fixed within a day. I've used IP's from a number of ISP's and cloud providers and it's worked well. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- muxketeer · 2023-09-28 01:59 True. Yeah, for me, I don’t mind maintenance. It’s email maintenance, specifically, that would suck the fun out of it for me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- death_hawk · 2023-09-28 02:03 It was them and the other one I can't remember the address of offhand that I passed with flying colors. Still get rejected. ISP IPs actually shock the hell out of me to be honest.