[ale] mail server with dynamic IP?

[Ron Frazier]

Tim,

I've only been following bits and pieces of this thread.  I don't know
if this would work for you, but I thought I'd mention the solution I
use.  I own the c3energy.com domain hosted through http://1and1.com/ .
You can get a domain name for < $10 / year.  I think you can get email
forwarding only for something like $2 / mo.  I pay $20 / month for a
Linux shared web hosting plan.  They have cheaper plans now, this is an
old one.  They host and forward my email, and it works well.

I have lots of flexibility in what I do with mail.  I can have hundreds
of user POP accounts, or use IMAP.  I use an elaborate forwarding system
to help eliminate most of the spam I would be getting since I'm pretty
active on mailing lists and have given my address to lots of commercial
entities.

(Evolution converts the email addresses into links.  Don't bother
clicking them.  They're all bogus, for example only.)

I have a private address which is my actual POP account that the email
client logs into.  Let's call that ronsprivatememail at c3energy.com.  I
have an intermediate address which forwards to the private one.  Lets
call that ronsintermediateadd at c3energy.com.  Now, hypothetically, let's
say I want to give an email address to Bob's Linux Magazine for some
reason.  I literally make one up, such as
bobslinuxmagdata at c3energy.com .  In the control panel of the 1and1
hosting system, I set up a forwarding rule that forwards
bobslinuxmagdata at c3energy.com to ronsintermediateadd at c3energy.com ,
which in turn, forwards to ronsprivatemail at c3energy.com .  Why bother?
The answer is control and flexibility.

The destination address of an email cannot be spoofed, otherwise I
cannot get the mail.  Therefore, Bob's Linux Magazine has to use the
address I gave them.  When the mail comes in, I can instantly tell which
entity is responsible for it by looking at the TO address, regardless of
what the FROM address says.  Let's say Bob's Linux Magazine sells my
address to Sam's Mortgage Company, and I start getting spam.  I see a
piece of junk mail from Sams Mortgage Company, but the TO field says
bobslinuxmagdata at c3energy.com .  I know that either Bob betrayed my
trust and sold the address, or that Sam's bot scraped the address off of
Bob's site or something.

Regardless, I can monitor how much spam that specific address collects.
If it gets to be too much, I simply delete the forwarding rule for
Bob's, and all the spam from that source vanishes instantly.  Not only
that, I don't lose all my other email I still need to get.

The intermediate forwarding address gives me flexibility as well.
Suppose the private address gets out in the open over time, which it
may.  My private email address occasionally collects a piece of spam,
sent directly to it.  I'm not sure how that happens.  But what if I need
to change it?  Let's say it becomes ronsprivatemail-2 at c3energy.com .  If
every forwarding rule was pointing directly to my private address, I
would have to change all 400 of them to point to the new private
address.  However, with the intermediate forwarding rule, I just change
that ONE rule to point to the new private address.

So, the new setup if the private address changed would be:

bobslinuxmagdata at c3energy.com forwards to
ronsintermediateadd at c3energy.com which forwards to
ronsprivatemail-2 at c3energy.com .

Using this system, I get mail from who I want only, for the most part,
and can easily ban them.  1and1 checks the mails for viruses for me.
They can also do automated spam filtering, but I don't use it.  I just
manually move the couple of spams I get per week to a folder.  When
there are enough of them, I analyze the addresses to determine how they
arrived, and ban addresses as needed.

Finally, my main private POP account forwards to another POP account.
So I have 2 separate computers logging into 2 separate POP accounts and
each getting the same messages.  That way, I have redundancy, and the
messages are stored on each machine, so I can use the email off line if
needed for reading.

Hope some of this is helpful.

Sincerely,

Ron

On Wed, 2011-01-19 at 19:21 -0500, Tim Watts wrote:
> I'm losing confidence in the mail forwarding service I use and am
> thinking of dropping it. This may be just the excuse for me to set up my
> own mail server at home, which is a project I've wanted to do for a long
> time. But here's the thing: I don't have a static IP address. Would this
> be a horribly foolish thing to embark on if I don't?
> 
> My server is up 24x7 and my IP spontaneously changes maybe once a week
> or so. Sometimes it will change several times a day. I have my own
> domain and monitor for IP changes every 5 minutes so I can update the
> DNS.
> 
> I don't think my ISP blocks port 25.

-- 

(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new messages very quickly.)

Ron Frazier

770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
linuxdude AT c3energy.com