I’ve heard this is really hard to do, and doesn’t really work because of spam. If this is really possible I’m willing to try?
Email Privacy Tip:
This is a 3-minute read, you'll get a lot of it. Treat yourself to some knowledge:
I've shouted from the rooftops dozens of times that self-hosted email with an open source CLIENT is the best solution for email. You can easily add pgp to your client, and use it if the other person has compatibility.
While you can self-host your own email, you can't pick what provider the other person uses. In this short post, I'll break down if they use Proton. In a different one, I'll discuss if they use Gmail.
Protonmail seems like a honeypot, because they were funded by the EU government (under the Horizons program), go out of their way to collect more data than needed, provide zero metadata protection, and their whole concept of a web app that forces you to give up control of your PGP key, defeats the purpose of end-to-end encryption.
However, you can still get pgp encryption even if you don't use protonmail, but they do. To get the PGP key of the other person use this command, and insert their username in the "user" section at the end:
curl -s 'https://api.protonmail.ch/pks/lookup?op=get&search=user@protonmail.com'
Then your client, (Thunderbird, Evolution, Geary, Seamonkey, Fairmail) will allow you to add their public key. You could add it as a contact, or just start writing an email to them with encryption, and the dialogue should pop-up depending on your client. Make sure to change the protonmail or proton ending.
For proton, if you encrypt the subject to them, it will show up as "..." which will negatively affect cold email response rates. So maybe pick a subject that hooks them in, without revealing the full content of the body.
Now if you're looking for an easy self-hosted email solution, where someone does all the work for you, then hands over full access to your kingdom, check out Simplified Privacy's program,
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/email-cloud-combo/index.html
So we are not really a "host". We're your tech support wingman, so you don't have to do complex work. Other people just complain about how things “ought to be”. I see them for how they are, and only through action can they improve. You should get a self-hosted email, because you can make a difference in your own life, and push us one step closer to a decentralized internet.
Peace, enjoy your day bro.
Discussion
Hey Bitlord,
It most definately is possible. Spam filters can be avoided if it's setup properly, and the right providers and choices are made. We've setup over 40 of them for people right here on Nostr. Reach out, we'd love to help you,