Hey there,
i have a domain (.de-domain, registered with netcup) that i would like to use for my email-provider, but i am hesitant.
Why i am hesitant: I don’t want that people might be able to find out my name/adress that is registered with my domain. If some service does not need my personal data, i simply don’t want them to be able to access them. It’s as simple as that.
I read that a whois-check could reveal my data, but the situation seems more complicated. At least, i couldn’t reveal my personal data with a whois-check.
Why i would like to use my own domain: I want to be more independent from my mail-provider.
I am not that tech-savvy, so sorry if this is a silly question. I tried searching, but didn’t found anything, probably because keywords like domain bring up lots of different topics.
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I tried to run my own email server for a while. It was hit or miss and a lot of hassle. So I decided on a EU mail service called mailo.com. For the amount of email I send and receive, it seems to do the trick.
In the EU, whois data is hidden by GDPR. As mentioned, it takes a special request to get the info.
Whois privacy protection is free and available for .de. It will hide registration info from public searches. This is definitely good enough for your use case of keeping services from accessing your personal data.
Just be aware it’s not full anonymity - your info can still be obtained through legal channels if required.
But for everyday privacy from services and companies, it works perfectly. Definitely worth using your own domain as it stops you from being locked into one provider!
Generally domain registrars have whois privacy so that when a whois is requested they find out who the registrar is but they don’t find out who owns the domain itself.
So they would get that you host your domain with, say, pork bun, for example, but they would not be able to get any farther than that without contacting pork bun as like an agency or something.
WARNING: This varies by domain TLD. Some TLDs require public whois information because the country that owns the TLD has dictated it. Just pay attention when creating/obtaining new domains.
shortwavesurfer, do you DX? I remember as a kid, running up a dipole antenna, and listening to shortwave stations around the world. I remember there was this station called Radio Antilies that ran the old AM radio shows like The Shadow, The Green Hornet, and stuff like that.
Some. AM DX is kinda fun and i have had my ham ticket for like 7 years now.
I self hosted my own email server for a while. I don’t know how other domain resellers work but namecheap has hardly any info on the whois query. The reason I gave up self hosting email was because all my emails kept going to spam for everyone I emailed. I think there’s a way to advertise your server to mark it as not spam for Gmail, but I don’t remember exactly. Plus incoming email needs spam protection.
thanks for the info. i am planning to use my own domain with an mail provider instead of self-hosting an email server. Reason beeing that in case i want to change my mail provider, i just move my domain to a new service provider instead of having to change my mail adress everywhere.
This is what I’m doing. I recently switched from the email service offered by my web host to Zoho Mail. I pay them $12 a year for a couple of gigabytes storage (which isn’t a whole lot but enough for me and I’m cheap).
As someone else says elsewhere, as well as changing the MX records to the new server, you need to add SPF, DKIM and D-MARC records in your DNS to ensure mail you send is accepted by the receiver’s mail server.
use my own domain with an mail provider instead of self-hosting an email server
How would that work technically? A redirect for all incoming mail?
I am using a service that does just that.
Just change your mx records to point at the new provider, no redirect necessary
The reason I gave up self hosting email was because all my emails kept going to spam for everyone I emailed.
You need to set up DKIM, SPF and DANE, then most big email providers will accept your mail. Worst case, you may need to contact them to unblock your mail server’s IP if that has been used by a spammer prior to you.
Plus incoming email needs spam protection.
Both SpamAssassin and Rspamd do a decent job of that.
Note: I’m using rspamd, and for some time at the beginning, it looked like it wasn’t really doing anything. Turns out it needs a couple hundred training emails before it will start using the Bayes function. Just feed your Spam folder into the learn_spam command and any of your normal, not-spam folders into the learn_ham command.
Of course Whois domain details can be unmasked, by law enforcement, CERTs.
Domain registration information can usually be found out somehow, although these days you have to jump through some additional hoops to get it, and those hoops are designed to discourage automated lookups. The privacy gains you get from hosting your own email server, though, are massive and IMHO more than worth it. If you are not hosting your own mail server, then the most you can expect from having your own domain is nicer looking email addresses. Depending on what your hosting provider supports you might also get unlimited aliases, maybe even regex aliases, which can be very helpful when handing out mail addresses to various companies and internet services.
If your main concern is that your email address should not be associated with your real identity, your best bet is to just use a VPN to connect to any large email hoster, like ProtonMail. (Obviously don’t use Proton Mail if Proton is also your VPN.)
Proton is CIA
Wut?
Getting a domain at for example https://njal.la/ will keep you private, Njalla will buy the domain and they will own it for you, maybe not ideal but your contact info will not be searchable.
To be fair. You never own any domain. That is why I need to pay monthly fees. Each domain name even dot Com etc are all renting.
… You’re not the registrant then, does that satisfy your semantics?
Yes, I host my own with mspencer.net. Feel free to look at whois info. Your registrar should offer something similar.
There’s this problem we have with self hosting standard public services. Everything that could be used by a business seems like it’s either a full time job-sized hobby to maintain it or you have to pay a bunch of money to a service provider for them to handle it for you. Nobody takes the time to create an easy recipe for people to follow.
Luckily, though email was a difficult setup, it’s run worry free since. My emails are delivered because I did the security stuff: opendkim, dnssec, tls, all that. And I get zero spam (apart from exactly two cases where they abused a legitimate sender - whose abuse department responded and handled it) so it’s been lovely. I don’t seem to have time to maintain this so I’m lucky it’s been running well hands-free.
It’s a project but I would recommend it. Don’t let the big tech companies own all email, too. We have to protect that ability by exercising it.
Domain registration information is public and accessible via whois. If your domain registrar has privacy services use them. They usually mean that instead of your name etc it will display the info of the privacy proxy.
For .de you don’t need any of that domain privacy stuff. .de domains don’t reveal anything over whois except the company you registered the domain at (and DNS servers, but domains are useless without that). You have to do some special request to get more than that. Idk how hard it is to make such a request though
https://webwhois.denic.de/?lang=de&query=example.de
https://www.denic.de/service/whois-service/anfragen-dritter-zu-inhaberdaten/If you only ever use this mail domain to send messages to or receive messages from people who don’t know your name and address, why not. Any old infoleak would otherwise indelibly associate that domain with that personal info.
