Re: [PLUG] eMail Hosting

[Rich Kulawiec via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

On Thu, Aug 29, 2024 at 08:38:33PM -0400, N. Albert via plug wrote:
> I would stay away from the big commercial systems (Google, Office 365),
> which, despite being widely used, tend to have the most issues and don't
> have your best interest in mind. Additionally, they tend to have the most
> technically inferior systems, for whatever reason; most independent mail
> providers and open source mail servers often far better functionality.

This is absolutely correct.  Let me augment this by adding:

1. These are operations which fail to discharge their basic obligations,
e.g. promptly reading, analyzing, and responding to all email traffic
to postmaster@, abuse@, and security@.  Their response when confronted
with this is to whine about how oh-so-hard this is because of their size.

(Let me note that an excellent way to reduce the volume of complaints
to abuse@ and security@ is not to emit so much abuse and so many
attacks.  Works like a charm.)

2. I have very extensive, highly customized anti-spam measures in place
on every mail system that I run.  (Not surprising: I've been studying
the subject longer than anyone.)  The top two sources of spam which
make it past all of those are: Google and Microsoft.  Oh, they're very
concerned about not letting abuse in to their operations; but they don't
care about what they're sending out.

3. If you choose to go with them anyway and you have a problem: good luck.
Both are justly (in)famous for presenting an impenetrable wall when
it comes to support.  Your chances of contacting a clueful, diligent,
experienced person who carefully reads what you write, thinks about it,
does whatever research is required, and responds intelligently...are
not good.

4. As an adjunct to point 2 above, let me note that these operations don't
even try to pay attention to what their own servers are doing to the rest
of the Internet.  This is Responsible Sysadmin 101 stuff that we figured
out decades ago (a) because we cared and (b) because people who didn't
care might wake up one day to find their network connection not working.

Let me show you an example -- and this is only one of many, and it's
not even close to the worst:

	NoSQL - Google Groups
	https://groups.google.com/g/nosql-discussion

That's the archive of the "nosql-discussion" Google group/mailing list.
(I recommend against following any links in those messages, as some of
them are highly dubious.)  Just scroll through the list of messages, and
then go to the next page, and scroll through that, and then go to the
next page, and then scroll through that, and...until you get tired of it.

TL;DR: it's been 100% spam for over 5 years.

(Let me note in passing that some of the other examples of this profound
negligence have been quietly disappeared down the memory hole, so this
one may vanish as well.  And when that's happened, whoever's done it
has wiped *everything* including the non-spam/legitimate messages,
thus recklessly destroying the content contributed by all the participants
in these discussions.)

---rsk
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