this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
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36
On email privacy: can I store my own email and relay them through an email provider? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
23 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

This is coming from a general perspective of wanting more privacy and seeing news of Mozilla creating an email service "which will definitely not train AI on your email". Sure Mozilla, whatever you say.

Rant aside, here's my question: is it possible to store all of your email on your own infrastructure (VPS or even NAS at home) and simply using an encrypted relay to send emails out to the public internet? My idea is that this removes the problems of keeping your IP whitelisted from the consumer, but the email provider doesn't actually hold your emails. This means your emails remain completely in your control, but you don't have to worry about not being able to send emails to other people as long as your storage backend is alive.

I don't know much about email to comment on what this would take. I think something similar is already possible with an SMTP relay from most email providers, but the problem is that my email also resides on their servers. I don't like that. I want my email to live on my servers alone.

Do you think this is possible? Does any company already do this?

Thanks

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I don't see how you wouldn't have your email on an email providers servers - that's how email works. You send an email via a provider, they forward it to the destination address you've included with the email.

That destination address is another email provider's server, which holds it until the receiver connects and downloads it. Email is a store-and-forward system, designed at a time when users weren't always connected. It still works this way.

Email is old, so the fundamental mechanics are pretty simple, and encryption wasn't an option at the time - so it's sent in the clear. Otherwise it would require both sender and receiver (either at both ends, or the servers) to agree on an encryption to use.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago

It is possible. One can have IMAP hosted on their server and simply use the SMTP server operated by a different entity. There are companies offering SMTP servers for free as long as you're under the limit.