Open angrypanda0 opened 2 years ago
It is not possible to use Tor for an email server, as it needs to be accessible from any clearnet server. I can't really see how that could be added to Umbrel.
My understanding is that one can host an email server as a Tor hidden service. It would have a .onion address and can only communicate with other .onion email addresses. I don't think it "needs to be accessible from any clearnet server," though I suppose you may have meant that statement from a UX perspective.
When you send a mail, you send it to your mail server for it to send it to your recipient mail server. So the recipient server needs to be accessible from the sender server.
I open up Tor, access my Umbrel dashboard, open up the email app UI, and send an email from my .onion address to another .onion address. Just like it works here, except self-hosted: http://torbox36ijlcevujx7mjb4oiusvwgvmue7jfn2cvutwa6kl6to3uyqad.onion/. Maybe you meant that it wouldn't work with any email clients, which attempt to send emails to the server via clearnet? That's a downside, yeah.
So I guess you wouldn't be able to receive mails from ppl not using a Tor based email server. And that's a huge downside.
Yes
If you are going to use one of the existing self-hosted mail servers (Mailu, docker-mailserver, etc.) you could replace SpamAssassin with a custom mail filter that requires lightning payment.
Anyone who wants to send email to me needs to pay 5 sats (or whatever amount I configure) for the email to reach my inbox.
A self-hosted email server (using Tor ofc) would be a great addition to Umbrel