# How to deal with mailing lists?



## Deleted member 63539 (Sep 2, 2020)

Even though I'm not using my main mail box for mailing lists, I'm still bathed with messages I have nothing to do with. As I have subscribed to too much mailing lists, I'm about to close this email account. How do you deal with the mailing lists without being annoyed by them I wonder? Thanks.


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 2, 2020)

You remove yourself from the mailings and only visit the list archives.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Sep 2, 2020)

drhowarddrfine said:


> You remove yourself from the mailings and only visit the list archives.


Nope. I have to subscribe to the list because I also posted on the list. But I not only receive emails about someone replied to my content but also other people's content and it flooded my mail box.


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## Mjölnir (Sep 2, 2020)

I use my MUA's _KMail_ built-in filter facility.  I also tried sieve scripts, but did not succeed, although my e-mail provider supports them.  Maybe I have to edit them through the web interface, but I rarely use that because a local e-mail frontend like _Kontact/KMail_ is more convenient.  Browse through /usr/ports/mail, there are plenty of tools to sort your incoming mail into folders when the mail arrives or gets fetched via POP or IMAP.  For shure a so-called _free_ e-mail provider (where you pay with your data instead of money) will not allow you to automagically sort their advertising mailings into the trash folder...
See here for two alternative e-mail+ (cloud storage) providers at the cost of 1€/month.  At least _Posteo_ supports sieve scripts, very likely _Mailbox.org_, too.  Many lists offer a _digest mode_, i.e. you get many mails bundled, once or twice a day, instead of all the posts separate.


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## Mjölnir (Sep 2, 2020)

sysctl said:


> Nope. I have to subscribe to the list because I also posted on the list. But I not only receive emails about someone replied to my content but also other people's content and it flooded my mail box.


Once you don't want to post anymore to the list, you can unsubscribe as drhowarddrfine suggested.


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## olli@ (Sep 2, 2020)

Messages that I receive from mailing lists are automatically filtered into seperate folders (one folder per list). I only look at those folders if I need to, otherwise I can simply ignore them.

Such automatic filtering can be done in various ways, and it depends on the kind of mail server you use. “Classic” mail filtering software would be mail/procmail or mail/maildrop (personally I prefer the latter because I think the syntax of the configuration language is much cleaner and less error-prone). Some email providers (gmail etc.) support such filtering, too, although the possibilities are usually somewhat limited.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Sep 2, 2020)

Thank you all but I admit I hardly understand anything of your posts. I'm using a spare AOL mail account to deal with mailing lists. I will check if it supports filtering these messages.


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## a6h (Sep 2, 2020)

You can also setup a nntp client like news/slrn, as I do. then connect to news.gmane.io server and you will have access to more than 34,000 readonly news/mailinglist including FreeBSD mailing list. Then you can take your time, choose and read, fetch and skip, so forth and so on.
I also customized its config file to simulate vim nvi/vim shortcuts. Very handy. You have options to customise colour, and choose your favourite colour for different level of threads, in any single of emails and its threaded replies.


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## Mjölnir (Sep 2, 2020)

sysctl said:


> Thank you all but I admit I hardly understand anything of your posts. I'm using a spare AOL mail account to deal with mailing lists. I will check if it supports filtering these messages.


If you fetch your mail via IMAP, it's comfortable to let your mail client do the filtering.  Good graphical e-mail clients are Kontact/KMail (Qt/KDE), Evolution (Mate) or ClawsMail (Gtk, i.e. Mate or XfCE).  AOL is more or less evil, it's your free decision if you want to find a better one.


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## mark_j (Sep 2, 2020)

sysctl said:


> Even though I'm not using my main mail box for mailing lists, I'm still bathed with messages I have nothing to do with. As I have subscribed to too much mailing lists, I'm about to close this email account. How do you deal with the mailing lists without being annoyed by them I wonder? Thanks.



Well it's quite simple: you unsubscribe. 
Then when you need to contribute again, you just re-subscribe.
So, for example, with FreeBSD-arch, just go to this page: https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-arch
and then at the bottom is the unsubscribe field. It just couldn't be easier.


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## a6h (Sep 2, 2020)

How to install news/slrn and subscribe to some of mailing lists:

`pkg install news/slrn`

Configurations:

~/.profile

```
NNTPSERVER='news.gmane.io'; export NNTPSERVER
```

`cp /usr/local/share/doc/slrn/slrn.rc ~/.slrnrc`

~/.slrnrc

```
set username "yourName"
set hostname "domain.name"
set realname "yourName"
set replyto  "yourName <yourEmail@domain.name>"
charset display "utf-8"
charset outgoing "utf-8"

set sorting_method 9
```

`slrn -f ~/.jnewsrc --create`

Use `/` to search list. Find your favourite. e..g
gmane.os.freebsd.announce
gmane.os.freebsd.security.announce
press `S` to subscribe
press `q` to quit.
`slrn`


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## kpedersen (Sep 2, 2020)

Mailing lists can sometimes be thought of as a "flat" forum with no categories. You will get loads of emails.

What I personally do (possibly not best practice) is to create a dedicated email account for each one and use an email client that can switch between them easily (*not* webmail basically).

i.e:

```
<nickname>_freebsd-ports@gmail.com
<nickname>_freebsd-security@gmail.com
```

And then once I no longer need them, I just stop using them. If I ever need to subscribe again, I try to make the same email account due to the consistent naming. If it fails, it means I already have one so I just log in with one of my basic passwords.


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## a6h (Sep 2, 2020)

Continue on news/slrn customisations:
This my custom colours (only modified ones). You can modified your ~/.slrnrc accordingly:


```
color quotes    "brown"     "black"
color quotes1   "green"     "black"
color quotes2   "green"     "black"
color quotes3   "green"     "black"
color quotes4   "green"     "black"
color quotes5   "green"     "black"
color quotes6   "green"     "black"
color quotes7   "green"     "black"
color signature "brightred" "black"
color status    "yellow"    "blue"
color subject   "lightgray" "black"
```

An this is some modifications to simulate nvi/vim shortcuts:

```
%
%% 10. Group mode key bindings
%

% Cursor movement:
setkey group line_down        "j"
setkey group line_up          "k"
setkey group page_down        "^f"     % Scroll to the next page
setkey group page_up          "^b"    % Scroll to the previous page
setkey group bob              "G"    % Go to the bottom of the list
setkey group eob              "g"    % Go to the top of the list
setkey group group_search_backward "?"% Group keyword search backward
setkey group group_search_forward  "/" % Group keyword search forward

% Actions:
setkey group select_group     "l"      % Enter the current newsgroup
setkey group refresh_groups   "^r"      % Get new news from server
setkey group repeat_last_key  "."      % Repeat last key sequence
setkey group suspend          "^z"     % Suspend slrn
setkey group quit             "Q"      % Quit slrn

% Display:
setkey group toggle_list_all  "L"      % Toggle listing of unsubscribed groups
setkey group redraw           "^l"     % Redraw the screen
setkey group help             "\\"      % Display a help screen

%
%% 11. Article mode key bindings
%

% General movement:
setkey article next                    "w"  % next unread article
setkey article previous                "b"  % previous unread article
setkey article skip_to_next_group      "W"  % go to the next group
setkey article skip_to_previous_group  "B"  % go to the previous group

% Actions:
setkey article save                 "p"    % Save article
setkey article pipe                 "|"    % Pipe article
setkey article decode               "d"    % Decode article
setkey article suspend              "^Z"  % Suspend slrn
setkey article quit                 "q"    % Quit slrn
setkey article fast_quit            "Q"    % Quit slrn immediately

% Moving in the article pager:
setkey article article_line_down    "j"  % Scroll article down one line
setkey article article_line_up      "k"  % Scroll article up one line
setkey article article_page_down    "l"  % Scroll article down one page
setkey article article_page_up      "h"  % Scroll article up one page
setkey article article_eob          "L"  % Move to the end of the article
setkey article article_bob          "H"  % Move to the beginning
setkey article article_left         "<"  % Pan article to the left
setkey article article_right        ">"  % Pan article to the right
setkey article article_search       "/"  % Search forward in the article
setkey article skip_quotes          "e"  % Skip beyond quoted text
setkey article forward_digest       "d"  % Skip to next digest

% Moving in the header display:
setkey article header_line_down      "^j"  % Move to next article
setkey article header_line_up        "^k"  % Move to previous article
setkey article header_page_down      "^l"  % Scroll down one page
setkey article header_page_up        "^h"  % Scroll up one page
setkey article header_eob            "$"  % Go to last article in group
setkey article header_bob            "0"  % Go to first article in group
setkey article goto_article          "G"  % Move to article (number)

% Marking as read/unread:
setkey article delete                  "r"  % Mark article as read
setkey article undelete                "u"  % Mark article as unread
setkey article delete_thread           "R"  % Mark (Sub-)Thread as read
setkey article catchup                 "C"  % Catchup (up to this article)
setkey article uncatchup               "c"  % Uncatchup (up to this article)
setkey article expunge                 "X"  % Remove all read articles

% Display properties:
setkey article toggle_headers          "F"  % Full headers (on/off)
setkey article toggle_quotes           "D"  % Display quoted lines (on/off)
setkey article toggle_signature        "S"  % Show signature (on/off)
setkey article wrap_article            "L"  % Wrap long lines (on/off)
setkey article show_spoilers           "~"  % Reveal spoilers (on/off)
setkey article toggle_pgpsignature     "!"  % Show PGP signature (on/off)
setkey article toggle_verbatim_marks   "V"  % Show verbatim marks (on/off)
setkey article enlarge_article_window  "="  % Enlarge the article window
setkey article shrink_article_window   "-"  % Shrink the article window
setkey article zoom_article_window     "f"  % Maximize/Unmaximize article
setkey article hide_article            "A"  % Hide/Show the article window
setkey article browse_url              "U"  % Search for URL and follow it
setkey article toggle_sort             "s"  % Select threading method
setkey article toggle_collapse_threads "T"  % Collapse/Uncollapse thread
setkey article toggle_header_formats   "#"  % Toggle header display formats
setkey article redraw                  "^r"  % Redraw screen
setkey article help                    "\\"  % Display help screen
```


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## a6h (Sep 2, 2020)

Continue on news/slrn customisations:
This is the list of read-only mailing lists (official and non-official) about FreeBSD on news.gmane.io server:

```
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.cvs
gmane.os.freebsd.advocacy
gmane.os.freebsd.announce
gmane.os.freebsd.architechture
gmane.os.freebsd.bugs
gmane.os.freebsd.bugbusters
gmane.os.freebsd.chat
gmane.os.freebsd.configuration
gmane.os.freebsd.current
gmane.os.freebsd.isp
gmane.os.freebsd.jobs
gmane.os.freebsd.newbies
gmane.os.freebsd.questions
gmane.os.freebsd.security.general
gmane.os.freebsd.security.announce
gmane.os.freebsd.stable
gmane.os.freebsd.test
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.alpha
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.arm
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.atm
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.audit
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.binary-update
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.cluster
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.database
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.documentation
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.emulation
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.firewire
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.file-systems
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.gnome
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.hackers
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.hardware
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.ia64
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.ipfw
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.isdn
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.java
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.libh
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.mobile
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.mozilla
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.multimedia
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.new-bus
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.net
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.platforms
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.ports
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.ppc
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.quality-assurance
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.scsi
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.small
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.smp
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.sparc
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.standards
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.token-ring
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.internationalization
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.afs
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.realtime
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.cvs.ports
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.cvs.src
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.cvs.doc
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.cvs.projects
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.threading
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.ports.bugs
gmane.os.freebsd.questions.german
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.x11
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.amd64
gmane.os.freebsd.italian.varie 1
gmane.os.freebsd.italian.annunci
gmane.os.freebsd.italian.traduzioni
gmane.os.freebsd.italian.aiuto
gmane.os.freebsd.italian.esperti
gmane.os.freebsd.freesbie
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.pf4freebsd
gmane.os.freebsd.performance
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.geom
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.acpi
gmane.os.freebsd.cvs.src.summary
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.apache
gmane.os.freebsd.italian.devel
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.usb
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.lfs
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.openoffice
gmane.os.freebsd.mpd.user
gmane.os.freebsd.eclipse
gmane.os.freebsd.bulgarian.user
gmane.os.freebsd.region.czech.user
gmane.os.freebsd.embedded
gmane.os.freebsd.region.russian
gmane.os.freebsd.region.russian.frdp
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.mips
gmane.os.freebsd.jail
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.python
gmane.os.freebsd.xen
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.virtualization
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.gecko
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.bluetooth
gmane.os.freebsd.wip
gmane.os.freebsd.ruby
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.toolchain
gmane.os.freebsd.chromium
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.office
gmane.os.freebsd.desktop
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.rc
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.xfce
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.ports.announce
gmane.os.freebsd.stable-9.scm
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.wireless
gmane.os.freebsd.bsdrp.user
gmane.os.freebsd.bsdrp.devel
gmane.os.freebsd.bsdrp.announce
gmane.os.freebsd.current.scm
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.infiniband
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.dtrace
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.pkg-fallout
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.pkg
gmane.os.freebsd.mono
gmane.os.freebsd.stable-10.scm
gmane.os.freebsd.cloud
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.transport
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.pkgbase
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.zfs
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.cvs
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.alpha
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.arm
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.atm
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.audit
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.binary-update
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.cluster
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.database
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.documentation
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.emulation
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.firewire
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.file-systems
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.gnome
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.hackers
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.hardware
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.ia64
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.ipfw
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.isdn
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.java
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.libh
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.mobile
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.mozilla
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.multimedia
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.new-bus
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.net
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.platforms
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.ports
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.ppc
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.quality-assurance
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.scsi
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.small
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.smp
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.sparc
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.standards
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.token-ring
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.internationalization
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.afs
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.realtime
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.cvs.ports
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.cvs.src
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.cvs.doc
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.cvs.projects
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.threading
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.ports.bugs
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.x11
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.amd64
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.pf4freebsd
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.geom
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.acpi
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.apache
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.usb
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.lfs
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.openoffice
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.mips
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.python
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.virtualization
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.gecko
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.bluetooth
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.toolchain
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.office
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.rc
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.xfce
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.ports.announce
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.wireless
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.infiniband
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.dtrace
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.pkg-fallout
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.pkg
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.transport
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.pkgbase
gmane.os.freebsd.devel.zfs
```


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## Deleted member 63539 (Sep 2, 2020)

mjollnir said:


> AOL is more or less evil, it's your free decision if you want to find a better one.


Could you elaborate more? Thanks.


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## Mjölnir (Sep 2, 2020)

Oh I _love_ these UNIXoid CLI apps where you have to read two hours through man pages before you're able to use them...  Unfortunately, _KNode_ is not supported anymore upstream


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## a6h (Sep 2, 2020)

sysctl said:


> Could you elaborate more? Thanks.











						AOL Proudly Releases Massive Amounts of Private Data
					

Yet Another Update: AOL: “This was a screw up” Further Update: Sometime after 7 pm the download link went down as well, but there is at least one mirror site. AOL is in damage control mode – the fact that they took the data down shows that someone there had the sense to realize how […]




					techcrunch.com


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## Mjölnir (Sep 2, 2020)

sysctl said:


> Could you elaborate more? Thanks.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL#Criticism is several pages long.  Shorter but only in german is https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL#Kritik, you can translate to your native language with the online translation service of your choice, e.g. https://translate.google.com


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## a6h (Sep 2, 2020)

mjollnir said:


> Oh I _love_ these UNIXoid CLI apps where you have to read two hours through man pages before you're able to use them.


GUI clients are great, but when it come to large amount of data, users will eventually experience some noticeable lags and bad performance.


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## a6h (Sep 2, 2020)

mjollnir I'm a KDE advocate, but I think sysctl wants to subscribe to lots of mailing list, therefore I've recommended CLI program.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Sep 2, 2020)

vigole said:


> mjollnir I'm a KDE advocate, but I think sysctl wants to subscribe to lots of mailing list, therefore I've recommended CLI program.


Not want. But already do so. Most of the mailing lists I subscribed to are of the BSDs (except OpenBSD, I didn't subscribe to any of their lists). I was annoyed by the pkgsrc-* mailing lists most, as my own message is not shown on the archive but they send me messages about other people's content I have nothing to do with. I don't know what kind of moderation they are doing but I will just unsubscribe.


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## a6h (Sep 2, 2020)

sysctl I'd started by subscribing to moderated lists before I subscribed to high-traffics list. In my opinion, moderated list is better way to start with. List such as freebsd-announce, freebsd-security-notifications and freebsd-amd64


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## olli@ (Sep 2, 2020)

mjollnir said:


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL#Criticism is several pages long.  Shorter but only in german is https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL#Kritik, you can translate to your native language with the online translation service of your choice, e.g. https://translate.google.com


A little off-topic, but I recommend to also have a look at the DeepL Translator. It often translates better than Google. (Admittedly, their web interface is a little more limited than Google’s and doesn’t work well with huge amounts of text.)


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## Deleted member 63539 (Sep 2, 2020)

mjollnir Does tutanota reliable? I have deleted my yahoo and aol accounts and changed the email address of all of my accounts on the internet to my tutanota email. Github has trouble with tutanota's keemail.me domain, though. It can't send verification email and said the keemail.me domain can't be verified.


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## Mjölnir (Sep 2, 2020)

Thx for the hint, never heard of them before... so I can't comment.  If there had been any bad news about them, very likely I would have heard/read about.  I guess you should send GitHub an _unencrypted_ mail?


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## Deleted member 63539 (Sep 2, 2020)

mjollnir said:


> Thx for the hint, never heard of them before... so I can't comment.  If there had been any bad news about them, very likely I would have heard/read about.  I guess you should send GitHub an _unencrypted_ mail?


No. Github just doesn't like any emails with the keemail.me domain and refused to send me the confirmation email. I asked you because tutanota is a Germany company so I think they should be famous on the country? I have only hear about two security oriented email services, one is tutanota, one is protonmail. Protonmail only offers 512MB of storage for the free account, too few, so I go for tutanota.


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## chrbr (Sep 2, 2020)

Dear sysctl,
Basically news/slrn is not about mailing lists but usenet groups. Many mailing lists are mirrored into such groups by news.gmane.io or others. Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmane. There are many advantages to subscribe to the mailing lists mirrored to the usenet, especially if you just like to read.

You do not need to download mails or postings you do not want to read.
Tools as news/slrn have excellent filter capabilities to adjust what you like to see, what to highlight and what to ignore.
News can expire. After some time they are not shown anymore and do not pile up in any mailbox. This keeps the reader clean.
It is really worth to try that. There are also some native FreeBSD usenet groups in the comp.unix.bsd.* category. But on the NNTP server I use I see only little traffic.


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## Mjölnir (Sep 2, 2020)

Maybe _GitHub_ blackmails the domain _keemail.me_ because there might have been spam coming from there.  You could write them an e-mail (info@github.org or something like that) asking kindly to exclude your address from their blackmail list.  My research for secure e-mail lead to the two services I named in the thread mentioned above.  I will edit that thead and add the two you named.  Interestingly, the german wikipedia article about _ProtonMail_ reports about a _Google_-affair, i.e. _Google_ suppressed links to _ProtonMail_ in their search results in 2015/16.  Hmm.


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## memreflect (Sep 2, 2020)

sysctl said:


> No. Github just doesn't like any emails with the keemail.me domain and refused to send me the confirmation email. I asked you because tutanota is a Germany company so I think they should be famous on the country? I have only hear about two security oriented email services, one is tutanota, one is protonmail. Protonmail only offers 512MB of storage for the free account, too few, so I go for tutanota.


Neither ProtonMail nor Tutanota offers native IMAP or POP3; end-to-end encryption makes it impossible to do so.

You would want at least one of IMAP or POP3 to be supported by your mail provider, else you can't use software like Thunderbird, Mutt, etc.  That means your choices are:

an email service that prevents you from using helpful third-party software in exchange for protecting your privacy
a regular, less secure, plaintext email service (email is inherently insecure anyway)
ProtonMail has one advantage in that it offers ProtonMail Bridge that is effectively a decryption service for you to interact with third-party mail clients.  How well it works is something I don't know, and I'm not sure if it will work on FreeBSD.  If it won't work with FreeBSD, I'm unfortunately not qualified to give advice about any workarounds (some sort of mail server running in a Bhyve VM that acts as a proxy between the bridge software installed in the VM and Thunderbird/KMail/whatever on FreeBSD? I don't know if such a thing would be possible!)


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## T-Daemon (Sep 2, 2020)

memreflect said:


> Neither ProtonMail nor Tutanota offers native IMAP or POP3;



For the time being only for paying users:








						IMAP, SMTP, and POP3 setup | Proton Mail
					

Proton Mail Bridge allows you to integrate your inbox with most mail clients that support IMAP and SMTP protocols.




					protonmail.com


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## memreflect (Sep 2, 2020)

T-Daemon said:


> For the time being only for paying users:


I can see why that would be a problem for some people.  Also, it requires you to install software to get support for those features in the first place, so that makes it a possible problem, even if you do pay.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Sep 4, 2020)

I started to feel severe limitations of the tutanota free account and considering switching back to Hotmail, or Zoho Mail.


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## ekvz (Sep 4, 2020)

I can highly reommend mail/sylpheed. In my opionion it's an incredible piece of software. I have filters set up to the point where more than half of the incoming mails get instantly deleted because it's unimportant garbage and the remaining part gets sorted so i can always dig them up with again with more than half of it automatically marked as read since while i need to archive them for reference actually reading the content would be a waste of time. Should work just about perfect for mailing lists.


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## Mjölnir (Sep 4, 2020)

sysctl said:


> I started to feel severe limitations of the tutanota free account and considering switching back to Hotmail, or Zoho Mail.


Remember that for the usual, mainstream, so-called _free_ services you pay with your (meta) data instead of money, while presumably the _TutaNova_ free service is a way to eventually get paying customers, which is reasonable & not reprehensible.  _You get what you pay for_, right?  I for my part am happy to pay 1€/month for an ad-free, privacy enhanced, optionally fully anonymous e-mail+ service.  Using services produces costs.  Maybe you do not feel the limitations arising from grabing your metadata?


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## hruodr (Sep 4, 2020)

If you use gmail, you can make filters that classify the mail and put it in different
folders.

I have a gmail account only for lists, but I do not do that. I send with the filter
every mail of lists to the trash folder, so that I do not need to delete them.

And I read gmail with mail/alpine.


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## hruodr (Sep 4, 2020)

chrbr said:


> There are many advantages to subscribe to the mailing lists mirrored to the usenet, especially if you just like to read.
> 
> You do not need to download mails or postings you do not want to read.



That should also be an advantage of imap, but modern, graphical mail reader programs 
download everything.


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## T-Daemon (Sep 4, 2020)

hruodr said:


> but modern, graphical mail reader programs download everything.



Not necessarily,  mail/thunderbird for example can fetch the headers only over pop3 ( not IMAP ).


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## T-Daemon (Sep 4, 2020)

ekvz said:


> I can highly reommend mail/sylpheed.



If you like mail/sylpheed have a look at mail/claws-mail, a fork of Sylpheed.



			Claws Mail - The user-friendly, lightweight, and fast e-mail client


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## Mjölnir (Sep 4, 2020)

_Claws Mail & Evolution_ are among the very few Gtk-based applications that I can recommend in all (good) conscience (I'm strongly biased towards Qt/KDE).


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## a6h (Sep 4, 2020)

mjollnir said:


> _Claws Mail & Evolution_ are among the very few Gtk-based applications that I can recommend


I can't comment on Evolution, but on Claws Mail: It was fine when I used it with a few email accounts. When I started to add more email accounts, lets say more than 10, I've observe serious performance issues, including lagging and unresponsiveness. I'm not sure it was a bug or some design problem, maybe it got fixed. Thunderbird has less problem with large number of email accounts, but not problem-free.


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## kpedersen (Sep 4, 2020)

If it helps, I tend to use the -F option to mutt to run it with different accounts (basically different muttrc files). I.e


```
$ mutt -F .mutt/outlook
$ mutt -F .mutt/gmx
$ mutt -F .mutt/work
$ mutt -F .mutt/gmail
$ mutt -F .mutt/disroot
$ mutt -F .mutt/freebsd
```

And better still to write a quick script (i.e called do_mail.sh) that simply runs them all sequentially and lets me process them all. I have never found a faster solution to mail than this.


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## hruodr (Sep 4, 2020)

With alpine: `alpine -p configuration-file`. 
I have the impression that `alpine` has better support of imap than `mutt`. 
It does not download attachments without requesting it.


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## kpedersen (Sep 4, 2020)

I had a play with alpine. It was pretty good, I found the config file a little more difficult to understand (I think it focused on people creating configs via Alpine itself?). That said, Mutt configs are also a little bit complex, but certainly a lot easier than Outlook, Evolution or even claws!

Yes, I did notice that attachments download when you open the message text. If they were large (i.e over 2 megs), that would be fairly annoying. I have been lucky so far.

The biggest issue for me is I couldn't get Alpine to work with davmail (exchange -> imap bridge). It should have worked (it is just standard imap after all!) but mutt happened to work first so I just stuck with that. I might give Alpine another shot if Mutt fails me.


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## hruodr (Sep 4, 2020)

Yes, as we read in Wikipedia: "Alpine is meant to be suitable for both inexperienced email users and the most demanding of power users". Hence, it should be "easily" configurable using alpine
itself. I would prefer it be only for "power users" of unix and be meager. In spite of it, I do not 
know a better alternative. 

I want to use imap, and that means to download as much as one needs, not all mails,
not whole mails, not every attachment, only headers or recent mails. Unfortunately
this original use of imap is being forgotten. BTW, (al)pine was developed originally 
by the people that invented imap, you find UW imap in the source of alpine till now, but 
unfortunately it is not anymore maintained. It was a very good imap server for fewer clients,
it run out of the box.


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## Lamia (Sep 5, 2020)

A suite like Thunderbird is good. You get irc, nntp, smtp/imap/pop3,etc for irc chat, newsgroup/usenet, email and a bit more. Claws-mail have some if these plugins too. I switched to claws-mail recently when Thunderbird was bloated up like firefox. But it still rocks.


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## a6h (Sep 5, 2020)

Lamia said:


> A suite like Thunderbird is good


On FreeBSD (my personal/home system/computer): mail/neomutt, www/newsboat, irc/irssi and news/slrn. On Windows (corporate laptop, unfortunately no way around that): Thunderbird for all above functionalities. I personally prefer to use multiple dedicated program instead of suite of programs


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## hruodr (Sep 5, 2020)

vigole said:


> On Windows (corporate laptop, unfortunately no way around that): Thunderbird for all above functionalities.



mail/alpine runs also in Windows. I saw it once, it looks very nice.
It can also read news (nntp).

It can thread messages, but never tested it (I prefer to read messages
chronologically). For reading mail you may select with ncurses a configured
account, for writing it has something called roles that I never tested
(I prefer to just use other configuration file).


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## kpedersen (Sep 5, 2020)

vigole said:


> On Windows (corporate laptop, unfortunately no way around that)



If it is policy to not provide admin access to the machine, remember that Cygwin's setup.exe has the --no-admin flag. Just because a few at your work are incompetent and unable to make good tech decisions, shouldn't mean you need to suffer!

And then Cygwin has alpine, mutt, etc.. all in the repos.


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## hruodr (Sep 5, 2020)

kpedersen said:


> And then Cygwin has alpine, mutt, etc.. all in the repos.



Yes, but alpine runs on Windows also without cygwin.


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## kpedersen (Sep 5, 2020)

hruodr said:


> Yes, but alpine runs on Windows also without cygwin.


Yep, the hint on Cygwin was just to get access to additional POSIX goodness


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## tingo (Sep 5, 2020)

ekvz said:


> I can highly reommend mail/sylpheed.


Seconded. Filtering the mailing lists into their respective paces (folders) and using mail/py-spambayes to filter out spam keeps my mailbox lean and spam free.


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## ekvz (Sep 5, 2020)

memreflect said:


> Neither ProtonMail nor Tutanota offers native IMAP or POP3; end-to-end encryption makes it impossible to do so.



Why would E2E encryption do that? I am not sure if i understand you correctly but i'd argue that it's actually quite hard to do E2E encryption without IMAP/POP3. Without it you would have to rely on the provider encrypting your data (unless you want to copy/paste some already encrypted data of course) which seems rather scary. Even if it's technically client side (java script) since that script could simply be replaced with a noop at any given time and hardly anyone would notice since who actually checks all the java script on a website every time they write an email?

Encryption should be done client side by using some actual email client. Yes, that sadly leaves the meta data which can be logged on the open internet if the email gets send to a user on a different server (which is only avoidable if there is a secure SMTPS setup on both sides which is quite hard/unlikely - the method of email encryption has no effect on this). If the mail does not travel the internet it's only the provider itself who could log it. That scenario seems way better to me than potentially logging the full text. All of that could be done with any semi serious email client over POP3/IMAP or is an application like ProtonMail Bridge (which even seems to be closed source?) somehow more secure than GPG?


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## zader (Sep 5, 2020)

I think the issue here is.. what are you trying to do?

in general filtering mail on an MUA (mail user agent such as outlook) is a terrible idea filtering should be done at the firewall level (for advanced users) and or by an upstream MTA (mail transfer agent, postfix/sendmail)

delevering mail to a mail box and then filtering is a terrible idea at best as there are many ways a spammer can verify delevery of mail .. once thats done your email can then be re-sold as active/delveriable..

as for TLS mail sending.. I would really watch the wording on that.. just becasue they claim "end to end encryption" only says they "require" TLS .. this ONLY ensures the transport of mail is encrypted..  NOT the content.

If you want true end to end encruption this is generally done by scraping the entire email to a container file (ie an encrypted pdf) and then transfering that as an attachment to the destination.  This ensures both the transport and content are encrypted.


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## ekvz (Sep 5, 2020)

zader said:


> as there are many ways a spammer can verify delevery of mail ..



I can't think of anything besides sending html with an external image that logs accesses. This is not going to work as long as your client won't render html (or is at least smart enough to not fetch external resources). I think there is also a header for requesting delivery notification but which somewhat privacy respecting client would turn on something like this by default? Beyond that i wouldn't know how to test delivery. Am i overlooking something here?


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## zader (Sep 5, 2020)

Im not going to post how to do it.. but you can refer to Email standards RFC 5322 3.6.7 Trace Fields is once very low tech way to do it ..  depending on the MUA it may answer without a user ever knowing.

There are other more advanced methods as well.   Some of wich may .. as you said use html/phishing methods .. again tho.. not interested in posting methods that would make a spammer smarter..


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## zader (Sep 5, 2020)

However..

here are some methods you could do to make a spammers life a terrible living hell on earth ...

Use a PF based firewall .. ( I prefer OpenBSD)

create some scripts to wget some/most/all of the black lists from the vaious sources like spamhaus..
sed/awk out the list into a list of just ips..

in your pf.conf .. create a black list table.
populate the table with the above list of deduped list of ips..
create AltQ rules to limit bandwidth from that table to 1 char per second...

This will allow a black listed IP to connect  downstream to postfix .. only to be dropped... thus insted of taking 10ms to deliver an email it will take several minutes to get dropped 

most people dont understand spammers ... spam is a business.. and its 100% based on mail delevery per hr ..

when it suddenly takes several mins per email to spam you.. they will go out of their way to avoid mailing to you..

tarpitting holds a special spot in my heart for spammers ..


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## ekvz (Sep 5, 2020)

zader said:


> Im not going to post how to do it.. but you can refer to Email standards RFC 5322 3.6.7 Trace Fields is once very low tech way to do it ..  depending on the MUA it may answer without a user ever knowing.



Most of the time the sender already knows that the target account exists when the server accepts the recipient and the real interesting question would be if the mail was actually read. In general acting on something like this rather seems like a mail server in the 90s might have done. If i was a spammer and found a server where this worked i'd have a way better idea: Just send a ton of mails that are going to get blocked and put my real target in the return path. The thought of the server notifying the sender that his spam was blocked just because he said so is amusing though.



zader said:


> There are other more advanced methods as well.   Some of wich may .. as you said use html/phishing methods .. again tho.. not interested in posting methods that would make a spammer smarter..



Boring.


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## Deleted member 63822 (Sep 13, 2020)

I have real trouble using tutanota to receive verification emails from services. The latest is topicbox. I think I would back selling my data to them. I will back using hotmail.


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## a6h (Sep 19, 2020)

gh_legacy said:


> I have real trouble using tutanota to receive verification emails from services.


From Tutanota website:

Tutanota, sometimes you need to wait 48 hours until this address is being approved.
This is necessary to prevent abuse by spammers and still offer an anonymous email registration.









						What should I do if registering with a Tutanota email address at an online service fails?
					

Troubleshooting: There are several options to resolve problems with online registrations.




					tutanota.com


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## fernandel (Sep 19, 2020)

gh_legacy said:


> I have real trouble using tutanota to receive verification emails from services. The latest is topicbox. I think I would back selling my data to them. I will back using hotmail.


I am using https://dismail.de/ long time and I have just good experience.


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## ekvz (Sep 19, 2020)

fernandel said:


> I am using https://dismail.de/ long time and I have just good experience.



Nice one. I kinda forgot about them. If i remember correctly they also run a XMPP server so for those who want this it's pretty much a 2-birds-1-stone thing.


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## sidetone (Sep 19, 2020)

Change the subscription options to digest. This way, there will be 1 email a day, whenever anything is posted to the mailing list.

Unsubscribe or edit options are on the mailing list page. When signing up, the option to receive daily digests is there too.


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## fernandel (Sep 19, 2020)

ekvz said:


> Nice one. I kinda forgot about them. If i remember correctly they also run a XMPP server so for those who want this it's pretty much a 2-birds-1-stone thing.


And servers run on FreeBSD/OpenBSD.




__





						Serverlist | dismail.de
					





					dismail.de


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