Mail Server Fun - or not

So, today I started my own mailserver as IMAP connections were slow to my existing servers. Good plan I hear you cry. Well, yes. :)

My new mail servers on a quick connection and always on, the basic pre-requisits for a mail server; since we don't want to loose any mail.

The reason for this rambling is to warn you about open relays - i.e. mail servers without authentication. I'd always thought this was a bit over-hyped, designed to make people forget about running mail servers, buy super expensive solutions or put up with gibberish advertising in mails and webmail.

Well, while the above may be true, its definately worth making your server as secure as possible and then de-securing it to make bits work, rather than the other way round. Basic common sence, but just incase you were wondering, I'd racked up 20-30 relay attempts within 30 minutes. Not bad for a mail server than didn't exist till half an hour ago.

These were obviously from hardcore spammers, with the attempted relays coming from vertually the same set of IP address.

About half of these were to old email accounts no longer used on some of my domains, and the other half were just random addresses.

Hmm, interesting.

Still, don't setup and secure, secure and setup.

Loosing Your Rights

I was poking around the web again today and found an interesting article on the BBC Technology site. The below is a brief summary of the bits I found interesting.

While reading it turns out that you have to be very careful when using ‘free’ online publishing services. For example, Microsoft took the rights to do whatever it wanted with everything sent via the Microsoft Passport, and as pointed out in the article, this means anything sent via Hotmail, including your latest business plan or idea.

Google has done the same with Orkut and even the BBC in its own article points out the dangers of submitting photos to its own site.

This is a good article worthy of a read. If nothing else, it emphasises the need to not undertake business via anything except your own servers, and do everything you can yourself.

Using free services is just lazy. The technology is not difficult to reproduce with a database and web server, and there are more than enough free, open source applications to do the majority of the work for you. You can pick up a server of your own for £50, a domain for a couple of quid, apache for free, Oracle for free. If your information isn’t worth £52 its not worth publishing.

Useful links

• Full BBC Article
• Apache Web Server
• 1&1 Internet Hosting
• Jive Software (MSN Alternative)

Oh, and yes, use linux! OpenSuSE