[ale] SMTP recommendation?

Thu Nov 3 12:55:17 EDT 2022

Resurrecting this thread with a conclusion:

I never got around to fully fleshing out how I would solve this with my 
own resources (although, the solution I settled on _is_ an open source 
one, so it should be possible). Ultimately, I stumbled across a couple 
of services:

1. 33mail.com
2. simplelogin.com

Initially, I tried 33.mail.com but they wouldn't relay with SMTPS and 
their support does not exist. So I switched to simplelogin.com[1].

SimpleLogin is _exactly_ what I was looking for to solve my problem. I 
have been able to setup a custom domain (actually two) to serve as my 
anonymous mail domain with the following benefits:

1. I can enable "catch all" so that I can enter anything in the local 
part of the email address and it will get delivered to me.
2. I can reply to any emails I get that have come through SimpleLogin 
and my "from:" address will be hidden. No need to add multiple local 
aliases to satisfy the outgoing SMTP server.
3. I can generate a reverse alias from the dashboard if I need to 
initiate a conversation without starting from a reply. Whenever I want 
to contact the other party, I write an email to the reverse alias and 
SimpleLogin will get the mail, anonymize it, and relay it.
4. I can disable aliases through the dashboard and stop receiving _all_ 
emails from that spammy entity without going through 50 different "I 
didn't sign up for this list" pages.

I am a little disappointed that they got bought by Proton Mail shortly 
after I signed up. I fear that will eventually mean I need to sign up 
for Proton Mail if I don't want to run things myself. But I really 
couldn't be more pleased with this service. I just wish Soverin would 
implement it and include it in my annual subscription to them.

[1] -- https://twitter.com/jsumners79/status/1548041511761154050

On 2022-01-21 17:12, James Sumners (ALE) via Ale wrote:
> Yes, I am still working on this project. I have determined that I
> _will_ use Postfix because it has implemented features specifically to
> support being run in a container (or via an init like runit). I
> don’t need _any_ incoming mail support. I need this to be an
> outgoing only server that:
> 
> 1. Has TLS termination at an HAProxy instance
> 2. Requires authentication via known credentials (“PLAIN”)
> 3. Passes through the “From:” address as-is without having to add
> it to a list of known addresses
> 
> I just haven’t had the constitution to dig any further into this
> other than what is stated above :(
> 
> On December 28, 2021 at 15:48:28, Horkan Smith (ale at horkan.net) wrote:
> 
>> Hi James, are you still looking for a postfix config example?
>> 
>> Sorry, I'm catching up on my ale list reading....
>> 
>> I'm not certain I'd start this way from scratch today, but I've been
>> running a home Postfix config for many years. In my case, I use
>> /etc/postfix/virtual to alias known 'good' local emails, which are
>> forwarded to my primary email userid. I use procmail to filter those
>> as needed, including sending 'em to a spam folder. For those emails
>> that *aren't* listed in /etc/postfix/virtual, they get sent to a
>> different 'spam' userid on the same system, which just drops them
>> into a local mailbox for me to examine once a month or so.
>> 
>> Note that you'll probably want business-grade home internet or a
>> hosted solution, which can change the financial picture pretty
>> dramatically. And, my outbound email will still sometimes get dumped
>> into my intended recipients spam folder.
>> 
>> Let me know and I'll dig out my config files for you.
>> 
>> later!
>> horkan
>> 
>> On Mon, Dec 06, 2021 at 05:48:26PM -0500, James Sumners (ALE) via
>> Ale wrote:
>>> It???s been many years since I???ve dealt with setting up an SMTP
>> server to actually send mail all over the Internet. But I find
>> myself in a bit of an annoyance with my mail provider. The short
>> version is they support an incoming catch all feature that will
>> deliver mail for any unrecognized recipient to a designated mailbox,
>> e.g. for foobar at example.com, ???footer??? isn???t a known recipient
>> so that mail will be delivered to catchall at example.com; but they do
>> not support _sending_ as any sender. I use this catchall to register
>> accounts, e.g. amazon at example.com??or some-random-site at example.com,
>> so that I can see exactly who has decided to ignore my opt-out
>> preferences or is selling my email address. But sometimes I need to
>> send an email as that identity so that I can get support, and my
>> provider isn???t supporting it. So I want to setup my own SMTP
>> server that only sends mail and will send as any sender for the
>> domain I have configured as the allowed domain.
>>> 
>>> I suspect Postfix is the appropriate tool, but am open to any of
>> them (e.g. exim). But what would you use? Are you able to provide a
>> minimal example configuration?
>>> 
>>> Ideally I would run this process in a Docker container and do TLS
>> termination at my existing HAProxy instance.
>>> 
>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Ale mailing list
>>> Ale at ale.org
>>> https://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>>> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>> 
>> --
>> Horkan Smith
>> 678-777-3263 cell, ale at horkan.net
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