Well, I finally have my own email server. It hasn’t happened quite the way I was expecting, but in the end I believe this will be better. I am paying for a VPS (Virtual Private Server) from DigitalOcean (A referral link, you get a $10 credit if you use it). I’m using their smallest server. I found a great setup called mail-in-a-box and installed it. The hardest part for me was getting the DNS figured out, and then waiting for it to propagate. It also includes built in support for Lets Encrypt so it is very easy to get SSL certificates setup. I’ve been very impressed. I started with my least used email/domain and once I have the kinks worked out I’ll move over my michel2010.name email/domain. If that also goes well I will slowly transition to using a michel2010.name email address instead of my gmail address.
My email is still on a server not physically controlled by me, but DigitalOcean is not (at least according to their privacy policy) going through it unless required to by the government. This means if I am still paranoid about my emails being read I will need to encrypt them. From what I understand it is best to encrypt the emails on the client side as apposed to the server, that way the encryption/decryption keys are not stored on the server.
Some quick follow up on my last privacy post: I am still using duckduckgo and startpage and really haven’t missed Google all that much. I also am no longer on Facebook.
I just want to give one more shout out to the mail-in-a-box guys. It really makes the whole setup of an email server almost painless. If you are even remotely interested in running your own email server it is well worth a look.