For example, something that is too complex for your comfort level, a security concern, or maybe your hardware can’t keep up with the service’s needs?

A social media platform where you can post or view images. I don’t wanna deal with CSAM.

@DeltaWhy@lemmy.world
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241Y

Backups. Cloud services like Backblaze B2 are so cheap for the durability they offer, it just doesn’t make sense for me to roll my own offsite solution with a Raspberry Pi at my parents’ house or something. Restic encrypts everything before it leaves my machine.

Password manager- it’s too important and it’s the thing that has to work for me to recover when I break something else. I’m happy to support Bitwarden with a few bucks a year.

Email- again, it’s mission critical and I have a habit of tinkering with things and breaking them. And it’s just no fun. The less I need to think about email, the happier I am.

@hempster@lemm.ee
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That’s what “1” in the “3-2-1” backup strategy stands for, a true offsite backup (preferably continent where you do not reside) For “2” I would still deploy a local offsite at someone’s house for quick disaster recovery.

Downloading your 10TB data from B2 (or even requesting a tarball HDD from them) is costlier than recovering from an offsite backup facility within an hour’s reach.

Butt Pirate
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11Y

deleted by creator

@hot_guava@lemmy.world
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Because the assumption is there’s very little throughput. Storage isn’t really that expensive, but bandwidth is and Backblaze is only cheap if you aren’t trying to get at your data regularly. That’s fine for backups because hopefully you never need them.

EDIT: I should say that for an individual user, getting data out of Backblaze isn’t that expensive, but it’s more expensive than cold storage. I think they charge $.01 per GB transfered, so a 10GB movie would cost you about ten cents to stream. It would cost you $100 to recover a 10TB backup from Backblaze (though for a fee than can mail you some of that on a hard drive, I think).

@pHr34kY@lemmy.world
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21Y

I self-host all those things.

I just have two portable drives, and I bring one home from work at a time to run an rsync backup job.

@zaphod@lemmy.ca
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31Y

Re backups, to be clear it sounds like you’re specific referring to offsite backups.

I run my own local backup server using syncthing for replication and restic for snapshotting, but I also send offsites to cloud storage (in my case gdrive).

@tok3n@lemmy.world
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121Y

Minecraft. When I started out it was fine but when I began to get regular visitors I got DDOSed for days on end and people poking me for ssh access. Never again.

eggbert1234
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21Y

Been using mine using docker behind an extra vpn container…works beutifully…

@tok3n@lemmy.world
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Sadly my server predated Docker or I would have done this. After I left the community I think they migrated to Docker.

@xavier666@lemm.ee
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21Y

Why were people asking for SSH access?

@tok3n@lemmy.world
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41Y

They weren’t asking, I was getting spammed with attempts. I changed the ports and locked down my server. In the end I switched to VPS’s.

You get spammed with ssh attempts no matter what. Just set up fail2ban with harsh firewall rules, key-only auth, and live happy!

子犬です
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21Y

I think someone else already mentioned it, but just to reiterate… Anything for other people who aren’t my wife and future kids.

Password manager, file backups, photo backup, whatever.

If something happens to me, or I pass away, wifey has instructions on shutting everything down (probably should write instructions on how to save all the important stuff).

But I don’t want to deal with other peoples stuff. I like tinkering with my server and different docker containers, etc. So I don’t want someone complaining they can’t access their photos because I wanted to try something new. Also, just don’t wanna be responsible for storing their photos and important documents.

@hempster@lemm.ee
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51Y

Aegis. Never use a local-only 2FA app on your phone.

TKrios
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21Y

Any recommendations for 2FA?

Paid bitwarden

@hempster@lemm.ee
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21Y

Authy, having paid bitwarden and 2FA in one app is a disaster waiting to be happen in case of a security breach.

lastweakness
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11Y

Can Authy really be trusted?

@hempster@lemm.ee
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11Y

Out of all hosted options available that I lasted tested 2-3 years back, Authy is the only one that reliably syncs and backups seeds across devices. I would switch in an instant if something like Bitwarden comes up but for 2FA only.

lastweakness
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31Y

Why not just use Aegis with a remote backup?

@okamiueru@lemmy.world
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What’s the problem with it being local-only? Just backup the secrets, and you’re good? Or is backing it up the “online” element?

@hempster@lemm.ee
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21Y

Like a password manager, I can’t trust myself for the seeds to get misplaced.

@zaphod@lemmy.ca
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First, that’s what recovery codes are.

Second, that’s what backups are for.

Frankly, given what we’ve seen with LastPass this past year alone, there is absolutely no one I would trust to host any of my credentials.

My TOTP seeds go in a Keepass database that has a very long passphrase. That database is then sync’d across devices with syncthing and included in encrypted backups.

@Samsy@lemmy.ml
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1Y

In the early days it was cloud and mail, since Mailcow works really good, it’s just the cloud. Because nextcloud is too much hassle, all this php stuff… I have a managed nextcloud at hetzner and I am really happy this is something I haven’t to worry about.

I check ocis from time to time, if it is usable the same way, I would selfhost my cloud again. NC on selfhost? Only if they do the same steps ocis already made. Because ocis is a simple single binary without php.

Password manager like Bitwarden. I’d rather they take care of it for me. The consequences would be too great if I messed it up.

@rglullis@communick.news
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I still don’t get why people want to have cloud-based password managers. Keepass works in all major platforms, it’s just one file, which it is super easy to sync and/or merge. It can integrate with your browser/Os if you want, but otherwise the surface attack is basically zero.

@AES@lemmy.ronsmans.eu
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Bwoa, you can easily take json backups. It is pretty safe imo.

Smart move, unless you really know what you’re doing and have redundancy. When I first made the switch from Lastpass to Bitwarden I had tried to host the vault myself instead of using the cloud version, which worked fine right up until the moment I had a server outage and lost access to all my passwords.

@somedaysoon@lemmy.world
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I’ve managed to keep my KeePass database for almost 20 years going back as far as when I was a dumb teenager. Back then it was as simple as having a couple extra copies on usb drives and Google Drive, but now I keep proper backups.

My take is, I’d rather control it myself, I am responsible enough to take care of my data, and I actually wouldn’t trust someone else to do it. That’s a huge reason I selfhost in the first place, a lack of trust in others’ services. Also, online services are a bigger target because of the number of customers, and maybe even the importance of some of their customers, whereas I’m not a target at all. No one is going to go after me specifically.

I think that’s what’s kept me at KeePass rather than moving to something like Bitwarden. Since it’s file-level encryption, anything that can serve files can also serve my KeePass database. When I upgrade servers or change to different services, restoring my database is as simple as throwing the file into that new service and going on with my life.

@somedaysoon@lemmy.world
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Yeah, my recommendation is basically this:

Do you need to share passwords?

No - use KeePass

Yes - use Bitwarden

@bdonvr@thelemmy.club
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131Y

Eh, the clients all cache your vault. It shouldn’t be a huge issue for it to be down even for a few days.

But I do upload encrypted backups of the server every 6 hours to cloud storage

Engywuck
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Same.

Plus, my instance is proxies through Clouflare and only IPs from my country are allowed.

Oh man, that’s actually really good advice! I recently switched to Vaultwarden, but you’re right: If my server goes down, I can’t even restart it, because the password for my account is in there! Damn! Close call!

newIdentity
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111Y

Usually the password are also stored locally.

I can definitely access all my passwords offline with bitwarden

@Limit@lemm.ee
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171Y

Well with bitwarden/vaultwarden you can have a copy of your entire vault on your phone or computer or both… so even if your server was totally dead, you’d have access to your passwords. Solid backups is a must, I follow the 3-2-1 rule on super critical systems (like vaultwarden) and test that you can actually recover. Something as simple as spinning up a VPS, testing a restore, testing access, see if that could work in a pinch until you get your server back online, then tear it down. Linode is very cheap for this kind of testing, it’d only cost you a few pennies to run a “dr” test of your critical systems. Of course you still want to secure it, I’d recommend wireguard or tailscale instead of opening access to your DR node to the internet, but as a temporary test it’s probably fine if your running patched up to date versions of docker, vaultwarden, and I’d always recommend putting a reverse proxy in front like nginx.

Wojciech Plackowski
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471Y

Mail, Bitwarden and Joplin. Too important stuff for my Raspberry Pi setup.

Second. I used to self-host Bitwarden. Then I realized it’d be too devistating to lose all my passwords, even with backups. So I moved to their cloud service and paid for my families accounts too.

Joplin tho, Joplin stays on the server with no backup. I should really, really make a backup this weekend.

lastweakness
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I really want to use Bitwarden and I pay for the premium as well, but it’s starting to bother me that a lot of basic stuff is missing despite years of user requests.

  • An Auto-fill UI for the web interface
  • Credit card auto-fill
  • A way to refresh from the auto-fill menu on the Android UI

I just tried Proton Pass (I have unlimited anyway) and it’s not better, but at least they seem to be working on these.

@IdealShrew@lemmy.world
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91Y

all the features you listed are available though?

lastweakness
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11Y

It has all of those though?

lastweakness
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11Y

Okay, credit card autofill is there at least on the browser, my bad. But the other two, no. What I mean by auto-fill UI is an overlay like we see in LastPass, Proton, etc.

If you add an item on your desktop, make sure it’s synced and try to use the Android app to auto-fill it, it won’t be there yet. And if you use the basic auto-fill view (“Items for x”), there’s no way to refresh. The main app (not the “Items for” view) does have a refresh option though, so i end up closing everything, going back and refreshing from there.

Also, I like the way Aliases work in Proton. I’m still using both and really like both, and for now, both have its pros and cons.

@cmhe@lemmy.world
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161Y

I am hosting bitwarden myself (on a VPS) and I am not that concered about losing my passwords, because every device syncs all passwords locally regulary so that you don’t need internet to access them.

So to loose all your passwords not only do you have to loose your bitwarden server and all the backups, you also have to loose access to all your bitwarden clients synchroniously.

@uranibaba@lemmy.world
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21Y

I’ve never heard of joplin but it looks just like what I need

aard
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11Y

Because passwords are so critical I’d never give that to a third party.

Stuff like bitwarden is needlessly complicated, though - I nowadays have a vaultwarden instance for friends and family, but everything important is done via pass - which only needs a git server, which I have anyway.

I don’t self-host Nextcloud. I have a cheap cloud instance running it and it’s essentially my off-site backup for important documents. I don’t put just anything up there but I live in New Orleans so I feel like I should assume my home server won’t necessarily be online when I most need insurance documents and shit like that.

lastweakness
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11Y

Same, Hetzner Storage Share has been really good for me so far.

@Fizz@lemmy.nz
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71Y

A video hosting service. I cant be bothered collecting and storing all that media.

I was the same way for a while, but the last few years have just gotten worse and worse for streaming. I have a handful of streaming services I don’t have to pay to access (some through phone provider, prime video, parents accounts, etc), but anything not on there I’m just going to pirate. I use sonarr/radarr with Plex so it’s super easy to get and maintain media and it’s easy to access on all my devices, and my 4 tb hdd was $100, which I more than made up for after 4 months or so by not paying for hbo max and Netflix. No way in hell I’m going to pay for every streaming service for every show that looks good, or buy them individually.

I did this for a couple of years and it became such a major hassle I just closed my server and told everyone to go get their own subscriptions. 30 terra-bytes of data deleted!!

@Fizz@lemmy.nz
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31Y

Ouch that’s brutal. You must have spent so much money on running all that and so much time collecting all that media.

newIdentity
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21Y

It’s not that hard honestly. I only have one TB though but it really isn’t that much of a hassle.

DunkinCoder
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11Y

IRC server or ZNC bouncer.

@h3ndrik@feddit.de
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71Y

Nothing really. I’m comfortable hosting mail, chat, my passwords and important documents. However:

Hosting personal/important data for other people is a bit intimidating because you kind of guarantee for safety and availability.

And services that are likely to be misused for illegal stuff and would be too bothersome. Otherwise i might host an anonymous spam eating email-forwarder, maybe a tor exit-node and a forum where adults can practise free speech. But that kind of stuff just attracts the wrong kind of idiots.

@bladewdr@infosec.pub
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61Y

Mail server, but mostly because deliverability in this day and age is a nightmare. If you’re some one off running your own mail server in 2023 be prepared to deal with many headaches around IP reputation.

@shrugal@lemm.ee
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I tried getting a music setup to work, but I couldn’t find a good solution for generated playlists with new song recommendations. The self-hosted music service just can’t add songs it doesn’t have yet, so it’s not really feasible. Plus I still have a very cheap YouTube Music subscription from the GPM days.

chiisana
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61Y

You can use Lidarr to subscribe to artists’ new album/singles. But you’d still need to have a workflow to add new artists every now and then to incorporate them into your library.

@shrugal@lemm.ee
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71Y

I want to be able to pick a song and say “give me a playlist of similar songs I don’t know yet”, and have that play immediately. That’s just not something a self-hosted setup can do. :/

chiisana
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41Y

Yeah I think the closest thing I’m aware of is Plex and album/track mood on smart playlist, and even then that’s kind of janky (ie: cannot shout into smart assistants to creat one on the fly). Music is so cheap now, even the free Amazon Music I get from Prime serves my needs, so I don’t even bother with it.

@faethon@lemmy.world
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1001Y

Hosting an email server is pretty sure a magnet for half the Chinese IP range… So I would refrain from hosting that myself.

@Anafroj@sh.itjust.works
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5
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Gladly, fail2ban exists. :) Note that it’s not just smtp anyway. Anything on port 22 (ssh) or 80/443 (http/https) get constantly tested as well. I’ve actually set up fail2ban rules to ban anyone who is querying / on my webserver, it catches of lot of those pests.

StarDreamer
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CrowdSec has completely replaced fail2ban for me. It’s a bit harder to setup but it’s way more flexible with bans/statistics/etc. Also uses less ram.

It’s also fun to watch the ban counter go up for things that I would never think about configuring on fail2ban, such as nginx CVEs.

Edit: fixed url. Oops!

Thanks for mentioning it, I didn’t know about it. Protecting against CVEs sounds indeed awesome. I took a more brutal approach to fix the constant pentesting : I ban everyone who triggers a 404. :D Of course, this only work because it’s a private server, only meant to be accessed by me and people with deep links. I’ve whitelisted IPs commonly used by my relatives, and I’ve made a log parser that warns me when those IPs trigger a 404, which let me know if there are legit ones, and is also a great way to find problems in my applications. But of course, this wouldn’t fly on a public server. :)

Note for others reading this, the correct link is CrowdSec

@mrms@lemm.ee
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31Y

This method supposedly works great too.

http://uu.ucw.cz/

@uranibaba@lemmy.world
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11Y

Om going to try that as well

@peregus@lemmy.world
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31Y

Me too, I’ll never self host my email server. Too much time that I don’t have to set it up correctly, manage the antispam and other thing that I don’t even know . And if it goes down and I don’t have time to look into it (which would be the case 95% of the time 🙈), I’ll be without email for I don’t know how long.

@shrugal@lemm.ee
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21Y

I’ve been self-hosting a personal email server for about half a year now, and it was definitely challenging! But it also tought me quite a bit about how the system works, so I think it was worth it. There are solutions for everything, but you definitely need some time and patience.

@Tinnitus@lemmy.world
creator
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151Y

I figured email would be a common theme. I’m just starting to dip my toes into all of this, so an email server is not on my to-do list (and may never be).

I have an email server but it is not my main email account. I’m purely only using it to learn and to have email notifications sent out from a few services. I do not trust myself or my setup enough to have my main email account hosted on it

body_by_make
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181Y

Google and other large scale providers have intentionally made it very difficult to self host your own email. It’s generally not considered a wise move these days and is very difficult to maintain.

@peregus@lemmy.world
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31Y

Why do you say so? I’m not an expert in the fields, but isn’t a mail server pretty much the same as 20 years ago plus DKIM and SPF?

@loppwn@sh.itjust.works
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11Y

ip-reputation is also important. Mailgun, an email service for mass mailing, is doing an „ip-warmup“ if you choose a dedicated ip. So, if you are self-hosting with dynamic-ip, i think you would have a very very low ip-reputation.

@peregus@lemmy.world
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21Y

True, but this has nothing to do with Google and other, is a well done method to avoid spam.

@loppwn@sh.itjust.works
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11Y

so what else is a factor for reputation? Or is it like if you dont pay to get your mail-domain whitelisted we lower your reputation score?

@peregus@lemmy.world
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11Y

No idea! I don’t run my own mail server. But if you read a bit up here, there’s a guy who runs his own mail server(s) since years. But the selfhosted world seems to be full (well…not so full) of people that self host their mail server.

Rick
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11Y

@loppwn @peregus not having PTR, DKIM, SPF, DMARC correctly setup is a killer, but there are great solutions for this nowadays, both #cloudron and #Yunohost take care of that part pretty well

MaggiWuerze
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91Y

Problem is, that most larger providers sort your mails to spam if the domain is not well known to them, which is not easy to achieve

@peregus@lemmy.world
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51Y

Mmm…are you sure about that? I happen to buy some random domain and I’ve never had any problem sending email even right after the domain created.

body_by_make
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71Y
@peregus@lemmy.world
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41Y

But there are even people that still self host email server (have a look in the selfhosted subreddit for example). IP reputation is a thing, for sure, but I don’t feel that it’s been brought up by the big corp wickedly, it’s a good way to prevent spam to arrive to the server. There are thousands of email providers in the world that are not Google, Amazon, Microsoft or some other big corp. This means that is possible. Is it difficult? For me for sure!!! But I think that the rising difficulty has been a result of this fields over the years. Just my 2 cents.

@ikidd@lemmy.world
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With DKIM and SPF, I’ve had zero problems in the last 15 years of selfhosting, most recently with Mailcow Docker on a residential IP. I don’t even have a reverse PTR to my mailserver hostname, just a PTR provided by the ISP that can be resolved.

I’ve added a few fresh, un-reputed domains to the server and had no issues.

I think many people’s problems with running email servers are self-inflicted. I remember even before there were things like blacklists, etc with large providers, many people had problems keeping mailservers running. It’s just not an easy task for a variety of reasons completely unassociated with the mega’s blacklisting you. I’ve been running mailservers at various scales for 20+ years so maybe it’s just second nature to me now.

@peregus@lemmy.world
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11Y

Thanks for sharing your experience with us. @MaggiWuerze@feddit.de , @body_by_make

@chris@l.roofo.cc
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61Y

I did host my email, but the problem wasn’t the spam but the bigger email providers. Best case was my mail was marked as spam. Worst case was that I was blocked until I jumped through hoops. Email hosting is unfortunately broken.

metaStatic
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71Y

what’s that? a federated service isn’t immune from a corporate take over? colour me shocked.

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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don’t control.

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