Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[MC_Sequoia]

'There is NO such thing as a free lunch ;!

Mailfence, Protonmail, Fastmail and many other email providers rely on paid 
subscribers who want more storage, more email aliases, more email domain names 
and other features to subsidize the costs of free, ess featured email service. 

For example, only paid Mailfence email subscription accounts get POP, IMAP, 
SMTPS access.

Can I have POPS, IMAPS and SMTPS access? Paid accounts have POPS, IMAPS and 
SMTPS access. The settings are:

POPS
server: pop.mailfence.com
user: your Mailfence username
password: your Mailfence password
port: 995 (SSL)

IMAPS
server: imap.mailfence.com
user: your Mailfence username
password: your Mailfence password
port: 993 (SSL)
Please note that simultaneous IMAP connections are limited to 20

SMTPS
server: smtp.mailfence.com
user: your Mailfence username
password: your Mailfence password
port: 465 (SSL)

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[MC_Sequoia]

"Since emails are encrypted by your browser and decrypted by the intended 
recipients, no one else can read them, not even Mailfence. This is called 
end-to-end encryption."

"That eliminates them as my primary application is Usenet and maling lists"

That's incorrect. I'm using Protonmail right now and it also uses end-to-end 
encryption and my emails are encrypted on the server so that Protonmail can't 
read them either just like Mailfence. 

In order for emails to be encrypted in transit to the other party there has to 
be a successful encryption negotiation and key exchange. If that doesn't 
happen, the email isn't encrypted because the other party wouldn't be able to 
read it, so why send it.

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

-Original Message-
From: PLUG  On Behalf Of Richard Owlett
Sent: Monday, May 8, 2023 7:47 AM
To: plug@pdxlinux.org
Subject: Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

>Fastmail shoots self in foot with with focus on "gee whiz" and pretty 
>pictures. No obvious link to unadulterated single >Pop email.

Now hold on there that's unfair, like a LOT of sites nowadays you have to use 
their Search box - type POP3 into their search box and it gives you the 
appropriate URLs:

https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/360058752854

Note the following from that page:

"Users on a Basic plan will not be able to use Fastmail on third-party mail 
clients, or create app passwords. IMAP, SMTP, CalDAV, and CardDAV are available 
to Standard and Professional users only."

>> - Works with any imap email client (Protonmail's paid plan requires a 
>> Bridge app for Thunderbird. etc)

>Protonmail doesn't explicitlty say that it works with Debian &/or SeaMonkey. I 
>require both.

Debian and SeaMonkey are what they term "third-party email clients"   If 
Protonmail's paid plan requires a "bridge app" (very likely a 2FA app) then it 
probably won't work.

I think that ALL of these email services are facing the same issues I've dealt 
with running the mailservers for ipinc.net and seasurf.net, there are just some 
users out there who insist on using the SAME god damn password EVERYWHERE as 
well as other idiotic things.

My domains are small enough so that I can monitor the reports from the 
mailserver and the moment that one of my users accounts starts getting used by 
a spammer I get notified and I can shut it down.  I run scripts that look for 
certain patterns in the logs that are characteristic of a spammer using a 
stolen password.  Probably once a month one of my user accounts gets broken 
into.  After I change the password on it I wait for a phone call from them and 
when they call in wanting to know why they can't get email anymore I give them 
the lecture on why you don't use the same password for email that you use for 
logging into DisneyPlus or whatever.  Then we reset their password to some 
random string and I have them save it in their phone and other email clients 
and they forget their password almost immediately and that's that.  No more 
break ins.  Frankly I prefer that they DON'T KNOW their own email password.

But that is a labor intensive manual process and these larger sites like gmail, 
etc. are just too big for that.  Thus their requirement for 2FA and thus 
breaking it on normal IMAP/POP3 clients.

Spammers are the biggest problem with running these mailservices and you can 
only fight them either using user education (which is labor intensive and thus 
unprofitable and some users don't like it) or a variety of esoteric software.  
I chose to go the route of user education and over the years, the users of mine 
who seem to take pride in being morons and insisting on doing stupid stuff, 
have drifted off to other services when I made it clear that I would NOT make 
it easy for them to continue to use my mailservers.  The ones that remain are 
more than happy to do what I tell them which is LOOK at senders actual domains, 
don't click unsubscribe links from obvious drive-by spammers, don't use the 
same password everywhere, and keep their inbox clean and don't let it pile up 
10,000 messages, and empty deleted items every once in a while.

With trainable users running the servers is easy, but with the obstinate idiots 
it's a morass.  My choice was to make life unpleasant for the obstinate idiots 
and make it easy for the trainable ones, but since running those is sort of 
hobby income for me I can do that.  The large services have to take everyone 
including the obstinate idiots and thus they can't piss anyone off, and so 
instead substitute software to try to mitigate the worst of the problems the 
idiots bring. 

Ted

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Richard Owlett]

MC_Sequoia wrote:

Wishing to avoid ads, I specified "paid" in the subject line.

There are very good free email providers that are Ad-free that are also worth 
supporting with a paid subscription.

Two of the top of my head are Fastmail and Mailfence:

https://mailfence.com/


https://mailfence.com/en/private-email.jsp states:


No one can read your encrypted emails
Since emails are encrypted by your browser and decrypted by the intended 
recipients, no one else can read them, not even Mailfence. This is called 
end-to-end encryption.


That eliminates them as my primary application is Usenet and maling lists.

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Richard Owlett]

Ben Koenig wrote:

--- Original Message ---
On Saturday, May 6th, 2023 at 6:44 AM, Rich Shepard  
wrote:



On Sat, 6 May 2023, Richard Owlett wrote:


Though I live in SW Missouri, I've followed this list for years. My
current provider is terminating email service soon. I run SeaMonkey on
Debian. Wishing to avoid ads, I specified "paid" in the subject line.



Richard,

How about gmail? Or proton mail https://proton.me/mail?


Rich


FYI protonmail has issues with mailing list compatibility. PLUG being a perfect 
 example.


Problems with mailing lists or Usenet would kill considering it.

 While yes you technically pay in $$$ they still run their Support 
center like it's Microsoft.


-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Richard Owlett]

Kevin Williams wrote:

I second the recommendation for Fastmail, as well as POBox.


Fastmail shoots self in foot with with focus on "gee whiz" and pretty 
pictures. No obvious link to unadulterated single Pop email.


https://www.pobox.com/pricing does not seem to offer unfiltered 
unadulterated vanilla Pop3 email for those not wanting their own domain.




Features of both:
- No ads and no scraping emails for "relevant" ads
- You can use your own domain name or theirs (you don't have to have a custom 
domain)

They also have these advantages over Protonmail
- Works with any imap email client (Protonmail's paid plan requires a Bridge 
app for Thunderbird. etc)


Protonmail doesn't explicitlty say that it works with Debian &/or 
SeaMonkey. I require both.



- Doesn't have known/deliberate issues sending/receiving email to mailing lists 
or other cases where the from address is legitimately changed

https://fastmail.com - I use their $5/mo plan for me, and $3/mo plan for my 
wife while I start the long process to migrate away from gmail.

https://pobox.com - Their $50/yr plan includes hosting your mail for you. The 
lower plans only Forward mail to your own mail server. I'm looking to add them 
alongside Fastmail with a second custom domain so that I don't have all my eggs 
on one basket.


On Sat, May 6, 2023, at 7:14 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:



-Original Message-
From: PLUG  On Behalf Of MC_Sequoia
Sent: Saturday, May 6, 2023 11:08 AM
To: Portland Linux/Unix Group 
Subject: Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider



Protonmail doesn't support POP / IMAP client connections but it's Ad-free, they do 
have free accounts, I use one, >but they're also an organization very much 
worthy of supporting with a paid subscription.


According to their site they only don't support POP/IMAP for free accounts.

Ted

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

Proton mail recoups the free cost because their free account requires you to 
access it via web-interface only.  No POP3/IMAP.  By doing that they can give 
you popup advertisements.

Ted

-Original Message-
From: PLUG  On Behalf Of Richard Owlett
Sent: Monday, May 8, 2023 4:56 AM
To: plug@pdxlinux.org
Subject: Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Sat, 6 May 2023, Richard Owlett wrote:
> 
>> Though I live in SW Missouri, I've followed this list for years. My 
>> current provider is terminating email service soon. I run SeaMonkey 
>> on Debian. Wishing to avoid ads, I specified "paid" in the subject line.
> 
> Richard,
> 
> How about gmail? Or proton mail <https://proton.me/mail>?
> 
> Rich
> 
> 

There is *NO* such thing as a free lunch ;!
As Ted Mittelstaedt wrote of gmail, "But it's known that they scan email to 
scrape marketing data from it."
I don't know how proton.me recoup the cost of providing "free" or if such 
techniques are applied to their paid services.

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Richard Owlett]

Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:

I looked at pobox and their forwarding has a limit of number of addresses they 
forward to so it
Isn't actually true wildcard domain forwarding.



I guess I don't understand purpose of "forwarding".
I want a single email addrees and mail stays in the provider's space 
only until I download it [typically once or twice a day].

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Richard Owlett]

Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:

Well it's worth mentioning that the Windows way of doing this is to run 
Mailwasher Free, then use your free ISP email account.  Mailwasher downloads 
the mail from the ISP via POP3 then scans it and removes all the spam then 
delivers it to your Outlook or Thunderbird or whatever email program you use.


I prefer to my own filtering/sorting.
That way, if there is a problem, there is only one person responsible ;)



Proton mail looks good but their downside is their free offering is webbased 
only.

Why not just put up your own email server?


I don't have the expertise to do it well/correctly.
That is explicitly part of what I'm willing to pay for.

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Richard Owlett]

Rich Shepard wrote:

On Sat, 6 May 2023, Richard Owlett wrote:


Though I live in SW Missouri, I've followed this list for years. My
current provider is terminating email service soon. I run SeaMonkey on
Debian. Wishing to avoid ads, I specified "paid" in the subject line.


Richard,

How about gmail? Or proton mail ?

Rich




There is *NO* such thing as a free lunch ;!
As Ted Mittelstaedt wrote of gmail, "But it's known that they scan email 
to scrape marketing data from it."
I don't know how proton.me recoup the cost of providing "free" or if 
such techniques are applied to their paid services.

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[John Bartley]

Been using https://www.gandi.net/en-US/domain/email for a couple of
decades for email forwards. They do offer forwarding an entire
domain's emails and many other services.
-- --
73/Best regards de John Bartley K7AAY  CN85oj  503-227-8539  j...@503bartley.com

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

I looked at pobox and their forwarding has a limit of number of addresses they 
forward to so it
Isn't actually true wildcard domain forwarding.

That is you can't tell them "forward  *@wonkulator.com to a mailbox"

If you could do that then you could literally put a company with 500 users 
behind them.

I don't see how you can have them "forward to your own mailserver" unless you 
define your
Own mailserver as "mailserver that only handles X number of addresses"

With ANY kind of these forwarding schemes the real issue is incoming mail 
terminates on the
Mailservice's server.  Thus, the only effective spamfiltering that is available 
can be done there.
You also can't attack spammers by tarpitting their mules and so on.

It's the spamfiltering these days that is the expensive part in my experience.

Ted

-Original Message-
From: PLUG  On Behalf Of Kevin Williams
Sent: Saturday, May 6, 2023 1:15 PM
To: plug 
Subject: Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

I second the recommendation for Fastmail, as well as POBox.

Features of both:
- No ads and no scraping emails for "relevant" ads
- You can use your own domain name or theirs (you don't have to have a custom 
domain)

They also have these advantages over Protonmail
- Works with any imap email client (Protonmail's paid plan requires a Bridge 
app for Thunderbird. etc)
- Doesn't have known/deliberate issues sending/receiving email to mailing lists 
or other cases where the from address is legitimately changed

https://fastmail.com - I use their $5/mo plan for me, and $3/mo plan for my 
wife while I start the long process to migrate away from gmail.

https://pobox.com - Their $50/yr plan includes hosting your mail for you. The 
lower plans only Forward mail to your own mail server. I'm looking to add them 
alongside Fastmail with a second custom domain so that I don't have all my eggs 
on one basket.


On Sat, May 6, 2023, at 7:14 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> 
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: PLUG  On Behalf Of MC_Sequoia
> Sent: Saturday, May 6, 2023 11:08 AM
> To: Portland Linux/Unix Group 
> Subject: Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider
> 
> 
> >Protonmail doesn't support POP / IMAP client connections but it's Ad-free, 
> >they do have free accounts, I use one, >but they're also an organization 
> >very much worthy of supporting with a paid subscription. 
> 
> According to their site they only don't support POP/IMAP for free accounts.
> 
> Ted
> 
> 
> 

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Kevin Williams]

I second the recommendation for Fastmail, as well as POBox.

Features of both:
- No ads and no scraping emails for "relevant" ads
- You can use your own domain name or theirs (you don't have to have a custom 
domain)

They also have these advantages over Protonmail
- Works with any imap email client (Protonmail's paid plan requires a Bridge 
app for Thunderbird. etc)
- Doesn't have known/deliberate issues sending/receiving email to mailing lists 
or other cases where the from address is legitimately changed

https://fastmail.com - I use their $5/mo plan for me, and $3/mo plan for my 
wife while I start the long process to migrate away from gmail.

https://pobox.com - Their $50/yr plan includes hosting your mail for you. The 
lower plans only Forward mail to your own mail server. I'm looking to add them 
alongside Fastmail with a second custom domain so that I don't have all my eggs 
on one basket.


On Sat, May 6, 2023, at 7:14 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> 
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: PLUG  On Behalf Of MC_Sequoia
> Sent: Saturday, May 6, 2023 11:08 AM
> To: Portland Linux/Unix Group 
> Subject: Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider
> 
> 
> >Protonmail doesn't support POP / IMAP client connections but it's Ad-free, 
> >they do have free accounts, I use one, >but they're also an organization 
> >very much worthy of supporting with a paid subscription. 
> 
> According to their site they only don't support POP/IMAP for free accounts.
> 
> Ted
> 
> 
> 

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

-Original Message-
From: PLUG  On Behalf Of MC_Sequoia
Sent: Saturday, May 6, 2023 11:08 AM
To: Portland Linux/Unix Group 
Subject: Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider


>Protonmail doesn't support POP / IMAP client connections but it's Ad-free, 
>they do have free accounts, I use one, >but they're also an organization very 
>much worthy of supporting with a paid subscription. 

According to their site they only don't support POP/IMAP for free accounts.

Ted

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

But it's known that they scan email to scrape marketing data from it.   That's 
why when you use the webinterface to gmail all your popups now start showing 
advertisements for topics you cover in your email.

Ted

-Original Message-
From: PLUG  On Behalf Of wes
Sent: Saturday, May 6, 2023 11:42 AM
To: Portland Linux/Unix Group 
Subject: Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

On Sat, May 6, 2023 at 11:08 AM MC_Sequoia  wrote:

>
> Gmail has Ads.
>
>
gmail does not serve ads via imap.

-wes

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

The issue with Gmail is they are now mandating 2FA even on IMAP access so you 
have to have a phone and I think maybe a smartphone.  They also have this 
online 2Fa thingie that if you "join" your windows box into their service that 
might work.

If you are able to access a brand new Gmail account vi IMAP from a pure Linux 
system that is NOT running Thunderbird, OR is running an OLD version of Tbird, 
then tell us how you do it if you CAN do it (T-bird has added in Google's 2Fa 
stuff it's not pure IMAP/POP3 authentication anymore)

OAuth2 doesn't just require "some changes" it requires fundamental changes such 
as scrapping out a lot of email clients like Eudora that worked perfectly.

Explain it's just "some changes" to my mother who was mightily pissed off when 
that happened

Ted

-Original Message-
From: PLUG  On Behalf Of bro...@netgate.net
Sent: Saturday, May 6, 2023 7:39 AM
To: Portland Linux/Unix Group 
Subject: Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider


I would suggest a (paid) gmail account. You can access it using IMAP:

 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/78892?hl=en

It's inexpensive (I think I pay $6 a month). No ads, built-in spam and virus, 
awesome webmail intereface (if you ever need it), lots of storage.

FYI: Microsoft and Google are phasing out Basic Authentication (username + 
password) for Modern Authentication (OAuth2). That might require some changes 
on your end.

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[wes]

On Sat, May 6, 2023 at 11:08 AM MC_Sequoia  wrote:

>
> Gmail has Ads.
>
>
gmail does not serve ads via imap.

-wes

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[MC_Sequoia]

Wishing to avoid ads, I specified "paid" in the subject line.

There are very good free email providers that are Ad-free that are also worth 
supporting with a paid subscription.

Two of the top of my head are Fastmail and Mailfence:

https://mailfence.com/

https://www.fastmail.com/

"Richard,

How about gmail? Or proton mail ?"

Gmail has Ads. 

Protonmail doesn't support POP / IMAP client connections but it's Ad-free, they 
do have free accounts, I use one, but they're also an organization very much 
worthy of supporting with a paid subscription. 

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[brooks]

I would suggest a (paid) gmail account. You can access it using IMAP:

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/78892?hl=en

It's inexpensive (I think I pay $6 a month). No ads, built-in spam and 
virus, awesome webmail intereface (if you ever need it), lots of 
storage.


FYI: Microsoft and Google are phasing out Basic Authentication 
(username + password) for Modern Authentication (OAuth2). That might 
require some changes on your end.

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Saturday, May 6th, 2023 at 6:44 AM, Rich Shepard  
wrote:


> On Sat, 6 May 2023, Richard Owlett wrote:
> 
> > Though I live in SW Missouri, I've followed this list for years. My
> > current provider is terminating email service soon. I run SeaMonkey on
> > Debian. Wishing to avoid ads, I specified "paid" in the subject line.
> 
> 
> Richard,
> 
> How about gmail? Or proton mail https://proton.me/mail?
> 
> 
> Rich

FYI protonmail has issues with mailing list compatibility. PLUG being a perfect 
 example. While yes you technically pay in $$$ they still run their Support 
center like it's Microsoft. 

-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

Well it's worth mentioning that the Windows way of doing this is to run 
Mailwasher Free, then use your free ISP email account.  Mailwasher downloads 
the mail from the ISP via POP3 then scans it and removes all the spam then 
delivers it to your Outlook or Thunderbird or whatever email program you use.

Proton mail looks good but their downside is their free offering is webbased 
only.

Why not just put up your own email server?  Since you are willing to pay for it 
just do what I do and pay for a static IP and you are off to the races.  Then 
you can do exactly what you want.  You can also run a VPN server to be able to 
remote into your computer when you are travelling, etc.

Alternatively, I have a friend that runs their own mailserver on a dynamic IP  
(residential account)

They run a router,firewall that I setup for them that goes to a dynamic DNS 
service which assigns a DNS name to the dynamic IP on the outside of their 
router

Since their cable provider blocks incoming port 25 I relay incoming email from 
one of my mailservers to theirs on port 2525.  Then their router port forwards 
2525 to port 25 on their server.   They run some spamfiltering but it's a lot 
harder to filter when you don't see the source IP of the incoming connection.

Ted

-Original Message-
From: PLUG  On Behalf Of Richard Owlett
Sent: Saturday, May 6, 2023 6:07 AM
To: Portland Linux/Unix Group 
Subject: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

Though I live in SW Missouri, I've followed this list for years.
My current provider is terminating email service soon.
I run SeaMonkey on Debian.
Wishing to avoid ads, I specified "paid" in the subject line.

I've found services that seem generally suitable, *BUT*
   -- one requires existence of a mobile phone account
  I don't have a smartphone due to vision problems
   -- another { catering to small businesses} needs a custom domain
  I don't under the ramifications of creating a domain

In one sense, privacy/security is not a major issue as >90% of my usage is 
"public" mailing lists such as this or tech oriented Usenet groups.

Suggestions/guidance please.
TIA

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Rich Shepard]

On Sat, 6 May 2023, Richard Owlett wrote:


Though I live in SW Missouri, I've followed this list for years. My
current provider is terminating email service soon. I run SeaMonkey on
Debian. Wishing to avoid ads, I specified "paid" in the subject line.


Richard,

How about gmail? Or proton mail ?

Rich

[PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Richard Owlett]

Though I live in SW Missouri, I've followed this list for years.
My current provider is terminating email service soon.
I run SeaMonkey on Debian.
Wishing to avoid ads, I specified "paid" in the subject line.

I've found services that seem generally suitable, *BUT*
  -- one requires existence of a mobile phone account
 I don't have a smartphone due to vision problems
  -- another { catering to small businesses} needs a custom domain
 I don't under the ramifications of creating a domain

In one sense, privacy/security is not a major issue as >90% of my usage 
is "public" mailing lists such as this or tech oriented Usenet groups.


Suggestions/guidance please.
TIA