Email provider for Notifications

[Fizix]

As you may or may not know, Gmail will discontinue "less secure apps" support at the end of this month.

The issue is that I have an email account just as the sender of notification emails for my pfsense router, AP points, NAS boxes, UPSs and a number of other devices that will no longer work after that date.

I don't really care if the email account is not very secure since it's whole purpose in life to to be a way to send me notifications to my real email addresses at home and work. And none of the messages contain any sensitive personal information.

Does anyone know of a free email provider that will fit the bill going forward or have any ideas for an alternative.

Fizix

P.S. I will be setting up a raspberry pi as a NUT server. If I could use it also as a private email server that could work.

 

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Just a couple...

If you have your own domain, there's always the option of setting up postfix, sendmail, etc...

 

[Fizix]

I am really liking the idea of using the RasPi to run a send only server.

I have a ProtonMail account, but I don't think it supports the email as I need. I will recheck.

THANKS.

 

[CaptainSTX]

As you may or may not know, Gmail will discontinue "less secure apps" support at the end of this month.

The issue is that I have an email account just as the sender of notification emails for my pfsense router, AP points, NAS boxes, UPSs and a number of other devices that will no longer work after that date.

I don't really care if the email account is not very secure since it's whole purpose in life to to be a way to send me notifications to my real email addresses at home and work. And none of the messages contain any sensitive personal information.

Does anyone know of a free email provider that will fit the bill going forward or have any ideas for an alternative.

Fizix

P.S. I will be setting up a raspberry pi as a NUT server. If I could use it also as a private email server that could work.

I use GMX for the very purpose you are looking for. It is FREE and seems to be reliable.

 

[dave14305]

Setup Google Two-Factor Authentication and generate an App-specific password.

Sign in with app passwords - Google Account Help

Important: App passwords aren’t recommended and are unnecessary in most cases. To help keep your account secure, use "Sign in with Google" to connect apps to your Google Account. An app password is a

support.google.com

 

[RMerlin]

Careful if setting up your own relay server. In addition to having to update your domain's SPF record (if using a custom domain as the sender), the email may potentially still get rejected by the destination server due to coming from an IP from a dynamic IP block, with no proper RDNS record.

IMHO it's best to get a cheap VPS (like a $5 nanode at Linode) and run your relay server from there.

 

[RMerlin]

Setup Google Two-Factor Authentication and generate an App-specific password.

Sign in with app passwords - Google Account Help

Important: App passwords aren’t recommended and are unnecessary in most cases. To help keep your account secure, use "Sign in with Google" to connect apps to your Google Account. An app password is a

support.google.com

How does that work? If you setup 2FA and try to use an app password for, say, a NAS notifications, won't that get blocked by a 2FA validation request?

 

[dave14305]

How does that work? If you setup 2FA and try to use an app password for, say, a NAS notifications, won't that get blocked by a 2FA validation request?

App Passwords are the workaround for 2FA prompts. But you would want separate 16-character randomized passwords for each app/use-case. Like virtual credit card numbers.

I rarely use my Gmail account anymore, so I may be talking out of my “app”.

 

[Fizix]

I use GMX for the very purpose you are looking for. It is FREE and seems to be reliable.

Thanks CaptainSTX! It looks promising for several of my systems, but not the old ReadyNAS boxes. GMX requires TLS 1.2 and above and these boxes only do 1.1. I will have to keep looking I guess.

 

[RMerlin]

App Passwords are the workaround for 2FA prompts. But you would want separate 16-character randomized passwords for each app/use-case. Like virtual credit card numbers.

Gotcha.

I rarely use my Gmail account anymore, so I may be talking out of my “app”.

My personal emails are hosted on Google Workspace. My regular GMail account is mostly just an Android account. However the only thing I have set up with email notification supports OAUTH, so i never really looked into details into apps passwords.

 

[Fizix]

Thanks all,

I have decided to try as a project to set up Postfix as a send only service on the Raspberry Pi 4 that I am going to use as a NUT server since although it does encryption it does not require it.

I will let you know how it goes.

Fizix

 

[Fizix]

All,

After more reading I decided that Postfix is more than I want to take on right now.

So for now I turned on 2FA and created an app password. Since the NetGear NAS boxes all look the same to Google I only needed the one app password for all four of the boxes and it is working fine. So for now I will stick with this.

My Synology NAS uses some other method to connect and just works.

I will have to do this with my pfSense box also at the end of the month, since I turned on 2FA.

Thank you everyone for your input.

Fizix