[MlMt] Follow Up to Email Concerns

[Bill Cole]

On 2021-07-08 at 11:53:26 UTC-0400 (Thu, 8 Jul 2021 11:53:26 -0400)
Dan Pritts <mailmate at lists.freron.com>
is rumored to have said:

> This is veering WAY off topic, but I’m curious that for only 2k 
> users you find it effective to run your own email.

That mail system is not a standalone service. It's a legacy service that 
isn't marketed at all, but we will continue to run it as long as we have 
customers (all small and medium-sized businesses) who don't want to 
leave. It used to be much larger but there has been a lot of customer 
migration to MS (and to Google but then also to MS.) Keeping it 
operational is not a huge amount of work and the customers who've stuck 
around have done so because they appreciate the level of service that 
the giant providers cannot offer. We also fill the mail admin role for 
some of those migrated customers, so I'm speaking of that capability 
difference from direct experience. Microsoft can't do what we do.

> Having done it myself for years I can’t imagine diving back in 
> unless it was a full time thing.

My primary employer does much more than email, so I have no difficulty 
staying busy.

Of course, I should add that I also run my own personal mail system for 
myself and my family: 5 people who pay me not a penny for my work. 
That's all about being extremely picky about my own personal email and 
professionally needing a system with a live mail stream including 
substantial would-be spam (if spam is never accepted, was it ever really 
spam?) where I can test anti-spam tooling with minimal risk and no legal 
issues.


>> On Jun 29, 2021, at 12:37 PM, Bill Cole 
>> <mmlist-20120120 at billmail.scconsult.com> wrote:
>>
>> I help manage email systems that see unceasing attempts to break into 
>> accounts, often using username+password combinations leaked by other 
>> systems. At any point in time, one smallish mail system I work with 
>> (~2k users) will have dozens of attack sources temporarily blocked at 
>> the network level by automated tools that can detect some careless 
>> authentication attacks. The simple fact that the Bad Guys find this 
>> sort of attack to be worth mounting is enough for me to know that it 
>> is worth mitigating, even if I were not aware of how exactly they use 
>> compromised accounts. Unfortunately, due to users ignoring vehement 
>> advice about password re-use, I have seen the impact that email 
>> compromise can have on both businesses and on individual lives.
>
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-- 
Bill Cole
bill at scconsult.com or billcole at apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Not Currently Available For Hire