I host my own mail server on a VPS. I made a clear cut from the big G about a year ago. I switched to duckduckgo.com as my main search engine, installed noscript, blocking all analytics requests, and set up my own mail server on Arch Linux using dovecot, postfix, and spam assassin. This setup has been wonderful and I feel proud to use it since I was once afraid of various issues which, in reality, have been minimal! I can access my mail from any computer or mobile device that allows SSH or has an IMAP mail client.
Once after a system upgrade mail was no longer being delivered to my inbox. I noticed after a day and thought it was strange. I forgot to reboot the mail server software after upgrading. Soon after my mail server rebooted I had many emails delivered from when my mail server was down. This excited and surprised me. I thought I would never get those emails but I assume the mail clients just held on to them and tried sending again intermittently.
Any self-respecting hacker should at least try to setup a mail server on a virtual machine. The hacker will find it interesting and useful. It really only takes a couple hours and it is fun! For those hackers who are brave enough, here is the guide that I used:
Sending mailservers typically try to redeliver mails for several days if something goes wrong (and if your mailserver does not respond with a permanent error).
Once after a system upgrade mail was no longer being delivered to my inbox. I noticed after a day and thought it was strange. I forgot to reboot the mail server software after upgrading. Soon after my mail server rebooted I had many emails delivered from when my mail server was down. This excited and surprised me. I thought I would never get those emails but I assume the mail clients just held on to them and tried sending again intermittently.
Any self-respecting hacker should at least try to setup a mail server on a virtual machine. The hacker will find it interesting and useful. It really only takes a couple hours and it is fun! For those hackers who are brave enough, here is the guide that I used:
http://www.gelens.org/archlinux-mailserver/