this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2026
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I give up.

I tried left and right to try to install an email server so I could degoogle my life.

But therechnical barrier is thick and Google keeps adding more to it. Forget it. I can't even get thru the installation process much less trying to get my shit off Google.

I figure, I don't actually have any need for my email addresses. Just like my phone number. I never call anyone. I'm going to discourage my kids from using email at all. I'll remind everyone I know that I don't use email at every opportunity I get just like I remind people to not call me and that my phone number is not available.

Between spammers and Google, I just don't need this headache in my life. My mom is much less technically savvy than the average pet. So Google will just siphon her data and when the megabits are full then you just delete the old stuff.

You don't need it. No one will spend their life reading your emails when you're gone or watching your videos or listening to your recordings or viewing your photos. There's no need to worry about just deleting the pile of shit you've accumulated. I'm this done.

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[–] zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I used mailcow, got an open relay immediately. Stalwart seems to do things a bit better.

I host so many services and it is not that I don’t want to learn new stuff. The effort is simply too high for a single service. And since there are very good providers which fully encrypt your data, I went this route to keep my mind off this part of my system.

[–] Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I fully understand your point, but the mailcow as open relay seems strange. Anyway, it's a risk/cost tradeoff right? Everybody should do it's own assessment and experimentation. But after the initial setup, it's zero maintenance. The only maintenance i do is keep the stack regularly updated, and it broke twice in 20+ years (dovecot new config format, WTF...)

[–] zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

I had long discussions with some mailcow contributors and it turns out, that some default settings can lead to an open relay if you are not careful. The biggest problem is that they use postfix. Postfix is not bad itself, as it is probably the most battle tested mail server. The configuration of postfix is a different story. And even if I prefer battle tested GNU/BSD software, postfix would be one of the rare exceptions where I would be careful.

I had a postfix running for years without issues, when I self-hosted SimpleLogin, and I fully agree with you. Once it runs, you only need to make sure that the security is managed.