Free anaonymous SMTP? (Solved)

[BillyO]

Does anyone know of a free anonymous SMTP server out there?

I have a few devices that I'd like to get notifications from.  Maybe 2 or 3 total notification per year.  Most of the free SMTP services out there will delete your account if you don't log in for a few months, or require secure connections which some of my older devices can't manage.

Bell Canada used to have one, but shut it down many years ago.  A previous IP I used to use had one, but they were bought up and the server was shut down.  My current IP offers no services other than Internet access.

[Monkeh]

If there were any still out there, all major email providers would reject their traffic as a matter of course. You could run your own and be able to authenticate to forward messages.

[BillyO]

Thanks.  That's probably right.  That was also the nice thing about the Bell Canada server.  It was in a premier domain.

I might have to resort to running my own. 

[MarginallyStable]

I run my own smtp server and forward outgoing through smtp2go. Not anonymous, but I have never had them shut my account down due to lack of use.

[BillyO]

Thanks.  They might work for some of my newer devices.  Some is better than none.  I'll have a look.

[golden_labels]

You are asking about an open relay, that is not blocked everywhere, and somebody funds it for you. Do you think it’s a reasonable request and consider there realistically exists any?

You are better off sending the email directly from your device, with properly configured DNS records, than finding a service like that.

[BillyO]

How much do you think I should be paying for couple of short notifications per year?  I have no problem paying.  I'd even pay $1 per notification.  How do you make a business case for that?  It would cost more to put in place the infrastructure to bill and collect the money, even at that rate, than you would receive.

Making it free allows you to offer a "loss leader".  It gets your name out there in a friendly and helpful way.  Lots of companies do this sort of thing in other lines of business, and used to in the email business.

My NAS' do not have SMTP servers built into them.  How are they supposed do what you imagine?

[kripton2035]

my internet provider in France allows me to create almost as many email accounts as I want, and also send sms on my mobile phone if I have the same mobile provider as the internet. very handy. this allows me to send sms from my domotic esp32 devices for free.

[BillyO]

I set up an account with smtp2go and all my devices seem to be able to work with it. 

Thanks to everyone that made a suggestion!

[paulca]

I run my own mail servers.  For outbound I relay via my ISP SMTP service.

When I tried to send email directly, GMail deleted them on receipt.  Most other email servers will too.

If you do run an inbound SMTP, to receive directly.... be warned.  Internet SMTP is the badlands.  You WILL be attacked constantly.  Mostly spam/scan emails.

There are a long list of defenses to install, like grey lists, etc.

You even get visited by the government cyber security monitoring firms.  They leave a URL and a message to say who they were and why they scanned.

[golden_labels]

I believe OP already found their solution. It doesn’t fit their original requirements, but it seems that’s not a problem.

Regarding your experience, it’s unheard of. GMail outright bouncing off an email? I can hardly recall hearing this happening even in “friend of a friend” tales. Any other service, sure, but GMail? To me it suggests some serious misconfiguration of your MTA. Consider running MxToolbox application on your email domain, or pointing somebody to the domain to inspect it. There may be some subtle mistake you didn’t notice. Both MxToolbox and experienced eyes should spot it. Mail-tester.com may also offer some insight (use with a temporary alias).

Spam level doesn’t really depend on who runs the email server,⁽¹⁾ but how reckless one is with giving email addresses. Ignoring standard local-parts (like “sales” or “postmaster”), or trivial or enumerable ones, spammers have no means of delivering any email without first knowing the address. If they do, it’s because they received your actual address.

Scans are common, but that’s just a daily bread on the internet. Not even worth caring about.

⁽¹⁾ It may differ for poorly configured services, run by “geniuses” that copy-paste random advice found on Google, bundle together as much blacklists as they can, and then blackhole everything. But that’s not because they reduce spam, but because they reduce email traffic in general. Both wanted and unwanted.

[BillyO]

It doesn’t fit their original requirements, but it seems that’s not a problem.

Not sure why you say this as I, just a few posts back, said this:

I set up an account with smtp2go and all my devices seem to be able to work with it. 

How do you get that the solution does not fit all my original requirements?

Just to remind you of what my original requirements were:

1) Free.
2) Work with all my devices.

The solution I have with smtp2go, meets both.

[golden_labels]

Just to remind you of what my original requirements were:

1) Free.
2) Work with all my devices.

The solution I have with smtp2go, meets both.

Maybe the forum rendering is wrong, but I see a third requirement (emphasis added):

Does anyone know of a free anonymous SMTP server out there?

/s

Either way, seems solved now. I was now replying to paulca’s post.

[BillyO]

Not a requirement, just a reflection of how I was able to do it in the past.  There used to be many anonymous SMTP servers available at one time.  Anonymity is not a requirement as I am only sending notifications to myself.  Why would I want to keep my own actions a secret from myself?

Must be a Polish thing.

As to your response being only to pauluca .. well your opening statement: ("I believe OP already found their solution. It doesn’t fit their original requirements, but it seems that’s not a problem.")  belies that directly.

Honestly, I'm not sure what is behind your poorly veiled insults.  I guess I should know.  I had a Polish engineer working for me at one time and he could not open his mouth without insulting someone or some thing.  He was competent, but in the client facing role he was hired into (before my time) he pissed off too many customers.  I didn't fire him as I could see he was very knowledgeable and quite competent.  I just made a job for him reviewing proposed client architectures created by our services people.  He proved to be an effective technical critic and a good asset, as long as he had no direct contact with customers.

I wish you the best.

 

[Monkeh]

Not a requirement, just a reflection of how I was able to do it in the past.

So if I were to ask for a cooked pork sausage, I'm not asking for it to be cooked, pork, or a sausage?

Honestly, I'm not sure what is behind your poorly veiled insults.  I guess I should know.  I had a Polish engineer working for me at one time

He hasn't been insulting you, veiled or otherwise. Your experiences with a former coworker are biasing your perceptions for some reason.

Must be a Canadian thing.

[BillyO]

 

[golden_labels]

I am insulting BillyO by noting that paulca’s post is not adding any value anymore, and at the same time excusing myself for continuing an already solved thread. Must be a human thing.

BillyO: trying to understand this logic, I’d need to scratch my head (located in Warsaw) so hard that I would scratch through it, through my body, the entire Earth down to Canada, through your floor, and start tickling your soles. Maybe then you’d start laughing at how ridiculous that sounds.

If I ran this thread through an emotional spectrometer, there is a small peak indicating Negativium near your first reply to me. I avoided attempts to untangle that and outright decided to quit from further engagement. Did trace amounts of contamination from that event somehow transpired to my message to paulca? If they did, I don’t know how sensitive detector you have to notice that.

[paulca]

I didn't even notice the reply.

But..
SPF (Sender Policy Framework),
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance)

Are the system in use on GMail and if your SMTP server doesn't use them and isn't registered then your mail is dropped. As I understand it.

[golden_labels]

What exact requirements Alphabet deploys is their secret, so I can’t confirm that exact set. I can only say what both me and other people running their servers observe.

But a bare minimum setup works (and worked in the past) with no issues on GMail, for anybody I was talking with. This doesn’t mean the email is not sorted later as suspected spam, but certainly no outright rejection of the submission itself. This is in opposition to some other email services, which on some nonsense basis: either reject connections, drop them, or delete received emails without notice.

The “minimum setup” is: DMARC and FCrDNS. There is no preference for the DMARC method, and in fact at least in mid 2025 GMail worked even with bare SPF (without DMARC). So nothing exotic: the same setup that is expected everywhere for good 20 years.

If you have a correct setup like the above and GMail still responds with a rejection, I’d be happy to hear what the setup is. That would be pretty exceptional and give some insight into their practices (e.g. geographic discrimination).

edit:
The summery of my current setup, censored to avoid harassment. MTA runs on “foo.domain.example” (192.0.2.1), the email domain is “domain.example”:

Code: [Select]

domain.example.         MX      20 foo.domain.example.
domain.example.         TXT     v=spf1 ip4:192.0.2.1/32 a mx ~all
foo.domain.example.     A       192.0.2.1
_dmarc.domain.example.  TXT     "v=DMARC1; p=none; sp=none; rua=mailto:[email protected];ri=604800"
1.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. PTR     foo.domain.example.This is a slight change from what I was running well into December, when I realized there is actually a mistake. I had my MX and rDNS configured for the domain instead of the host — probably messed it up while moving hosting in 2023. GMail still did not give a damn.

[guenthert]

I didn't even notice the reply.

But..
SPF (Sender Policy Framework),
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance)

Are the system in use on GMail and if your SMTP server doesn't use them and isn't registered then your mail is dropped. As I understand it.

   if your SMTP server doesn't use either one of them, then your mail is dropped (well, actually it bounces with a fairly descriptive error message).  Not sure, what you mean by registered;  reverse DNS must be in place and must match though.

    I haven't tested my own server in a while, but yes, it still can send to gmail.   

[paulca]

reverse DNS must be in place and must match though.

I think this was a my main hurdle.  I have a residential IP from the Ripe range.  So the reverse DNS is my truncated username dot isp domain.

[Monkeh]

reverse DNS must be in place and must match though.

I think this was a my main hurdle.  I have a residential IP from the Ripe range.  So the reverse DNS is my truncated username dot isp domain.

Sending unauthenticated mail from a consumer ISP is usually very difficult for good reason. It's also often very hard from IP blocks known to be used by low cost virtual server providers including the likes of AWS.

Imagine the junk you'd receive if printing were nearly free and the postal service would take anything from anyone to anywhere, in bulk, for free.

[golden_labels]

FCrDNS has been a requirement since the 2000s. So if you can’t set that up, not only GMail is going to reject a connection. Before the widespread deployment of SPF or DKIM, that has been the only way to detect malicious senders with high certainity.

I don’t believe it serves its purpose anymore. Now either SPF or DKIM can authenticate the sender and they do it much better. But now we’re trapped in a situation, where keeping the FCrDNS requirement is a preferable option. Every single valid email service out there has it configured. In consequence, a connection missing the matching PTR and A/AAAA entries universally indicates a misconfigured or an unwanted sender. This is a positive feedback loop now, keeping us in a stable equilibrum.