Topic: Mail Server

John C. Dvorak discusses technical issues with his email server, including the mysterious deletion of his alias files. He also complains about aggressive spam filters that blacklisted the word "nipples," preventing a listener from sending a story about a "Dr. Oz" show producer's strange request for a guest.

Yahoo Mail experiences a significant multi-day outage. Meanwhile, Gmail changes its image loading policy to facilitate tracking by marketers and begins prompting users to send money via "Gmail Wallet" in the compose window. The hosts urge listeners to opt out of free services and use community-run email servers.

Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak open episode 537 of the No Agenda show from Austin and Northern Silicon Valley. Curry describes setting up a new decentralized mail server after a drive failure during his vacation. The hosts briefly discuss the logistics of renting private rail cars attached to Amtrak trains.

The hosts discuss how the government can access emails stored on third-party services like Gmail without a warrant if they are over 180 days old. They advocate for users to run their own private mail servers to maintain control over their data and history.

Adam Curry describes his experience setting up a private mail server on a Mac Mini to move away from Gmail and improve privacy. He notes the staggering amount of spam traffic—roughly four attempts per second—visible in the SMTP logs. The discussion covers the technical challenges of residential IP ranges being blocked by other mail servers and the importance of keeping communications away from government-accessible cloud providers.