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1. Karen Sandler (o0karen0o@mastodon.technology)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jan-2022 18:27:34 UTC Karen Sandler

   So frustrating that many gmail users are unaware that emails from small independent mail servers are regularly dumped into spam, have attachments and/or links dropped, and then get annoyed at me for it. Especially in non-tech circles, they often don't believe it's even possible.

   • Lars Wirzenius (liw@toot.liw.fi)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jan-2022 18:27:39 UTC Lars Wirzenius

     in reply to

     • Mark Shane Hayden

     @msh @o0karen0o At my previous job, we use gmail, using the employer's own domain. All mail was sent via gmail, using authentication, even if sometimes not via the web interface.

     I had one co-worker whose emails usually, but not always, ended up in my spam folder, regardless of their content. Never did figure out why.

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   • Mark Shane Hayden (msh@coales.co)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jan-2022 18:27:43 UTC Mark Shane Hayden

     in reply to

     @o0karen0o gmail anti-spam measures are so "good" because they aggressively scrub emails with little regard to false positives. Based on my experiences hosting my own email servers for over 20 years I am convinced Google believes email should be a centralised service provided only by the tech monopolists...preferably only them.

     Running an email server these days is actually pretty easy. The ONLY hard part is jumping through the ridiculous hoops put up by gmail and to some extent Microsoft's email services...almost all of which do next to nothing to mitigate spam.

   • Seachaint :verified: (seachaint@hackers.town)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jan-2022 18:30:08 UTC Seachaint :verified:

     in reply to

     • Ed Summers

     @edsu @o0karen0o Pity there was never a widely used standard for "packaged server settings", so you could just provide people with a little settings file and let them pick a client, load settings, log-in as usual.

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   • Seachaint :verified: (seachaint@hackers.town)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jan-2022 18:30:13 UTC Seachaint :verified:

     in reply to

     • Ed Summers

     @edsu @o0karen0o Google is way ahead of you, it's officially difficult to set up standard IMAP clients with Gmail now. And I think admins in managed Gmail accounts can forbid it entirely.

   • Ed Summers (edsu@social.coop)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jan-2022 18:30:13 UTC Ed Summers

     in reply to

     • Seachaint :verified:

     @seachaint @o0karen0o It has never been easy I guess, with acronym soup (IMAP, POP, SMTP, TLS, what what)? But instructions can usually be found if you are persistent?

     As a point of reference, I got a new work laptop recently (MacOS) and spent a bit of time getting Mail to talk to my personal Gmail, my work email (Exchange) and my Pobox (now Fastmail) and it worked. I couldn't seem to convince my Android FairEmail app to talk to the work Exchange though, so your point stands.

   • Ed Summers (edsu@social.coop)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jan-2022 18:30:14 UTC Ed Summers

     in reply to

     @o0karen0o It is frustrating.

     If I had a penny for every time someone has said "have you checked your spam folder" I could buy a ☕ and a 🥯 and have some 💰 left over.

     I wonder how that ship can be turned?

     Would encouraging the use (and support) of email clients instead of webmail help people realize how email is not a platform?

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jan-2022 18:30:34 UTC Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     • Ed Summers

     @edsu @o0karen0o Besides: There's zero hope for usable end-to-end encryption whilst most everyone's using webmail! Though it'd still be hard once email's moved off of the web...

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   • Seachaint :verified: (seachaint@hackers.town)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jan-2022 18:30:36 UTC Seachaint :verified:

     in reply to

     • Ed Summers

     @edsu Actually I have no idea how that works. I assumed it was basically a limited port-scan followed by a STARTTLS handshake attempt or something.

     But now I wonder whether a DNS based solution could work even better - package login settings in a TXT record so clients can fetch them from nothing _but_ login details? (with username being full email address)

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   • Ed Summers (edsu@social.coop)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jan-2022 18:30:37 UTC Ed Summers

     in reply to

     • Seachaint :verified:

     @seachaint I know some clients seem to be able to autodetect settings, but I always assumed that worked because the client recognized the corporate platform behind the domain somehow? A little standard for packaging up the details would be super useful.

   • Ed Summers (edsu@social.coop)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jan-2022 18:30:38 UTC Ed Summers

     in reply to

     • Seachaint :verified:

     @seachaint @o0karen0o what a super idea though, hmm

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Saturday, 08-Jan-2022 18:30:42 UTC Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     • Ed Summers
     • Seachaint :verified:

     @edsu @seachaint @o0karen0o There's now a protocol for making logging in via a native client easy: you can download a standard configuration over HTTP on supporting email hosts.

     Unfortunately clients & servers which support it are rare. So doesn't help much yet.

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