Privacy

31981 readers

453 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Self-hosting a mail server with zero-access encryption for all emails, similar to Protonmail (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 weeks ago by communism@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

22 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I was interested in hosting my own mail server that provides a similar level of privacy for users as Protonmail, ie the server admin cannot read any emails, even those which are not E2EE with PGP. Is there a self-hostable solution to this?

I'm aware the server admin can't read emails that were sent encrypted using the user's PGP key, but most emails I get are automated emails from companies/services/etc without the option to upload a public key to send the user encrypted email. If you're with a service like Protonmail, the server admin still cannot read even these emails.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] davidebro@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm curious - do you use email aliases to help reduce spam or block specific senders more easily? I've found that aliases can make a big difference in managing privacy and limiting unwanted messages. Startmail, for example, offers aliases as a convenient option without the need for self-hosting.

[–] mspencer712@programming.dev 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I do, and I agree about their utility. My users and aliases are in OpenLDAP but it’s pretty easy to add new ones.

Separate accounts are preferable if you’re actually going to be responding to messages. I’ve had some embarrassing encounters where I’ve given an alias to a business that I didn’t realize was going to actually use it for real email conversations with a human. By default roundcube web mail lets you hit reply anyway and the reply goes out with your real address, which can lead to confusion.

[–] davidebro@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That's a great point about alias use in roundcube. I can see how it could get confusing if you accidentally reply with your real address. This is where I think alias services that handle that automatically really shine. Have you ever run into other limitations or surprises with self-hosting, like with spam filtering or uptime? I imagine it could be quite time-consuming to keep up with all the configurations and updates, especially if you're aiming to maintain strong privacy protections.

[–] mspencer712@programming.dev 1 points 2 weeks ago

Not really, it’s been pretty effortless. Every couple months I have to make sure my renewed LetsEncrypt certs really got imported, but I don’t think I’ve had to intervene manually for anything in a long time.