'Homebrew' email servers: Genius as well as sneaky?

fLIPBOARD/AP ^ | 03/06/2015 | ANNE FLAHERTY and NANCY BENAC

[Responsibility2nd]

WASHINGTON (AP) — No, it's not always a room filled with wires and glowing blue lights. It's probably not even the size of your furnace. The personal email server used by Hillary Rodham Clinton during her time as secretary of state was probably about the size of your office desktop computer and could have been tucked quietly in a corner somewhere.

She's come a long way since 1997, when Clinton's staff bought the then-first lady a copy of the book "E-Mail for Dummies."

Setting up your own email server is something only the geekiest of tech geeks do because of the serious hassles involved, including spending every waking hour fending off spam. Like brewing your own beer, it's typically done just for fun — a way to challenge your smarts and fill the time. It also appeals to those who fear the government is sniffing around and could compel companies like Google or Yahoo to release customer data.

~snip~

In other words, if you want a complete record of Clinton's electronic correspondence while she was helping to decide matters of war and peace, you'd have to knock on her door and ask politely. Or take her to court.

For Clinton, who is eyeing a presidential bid and is the wife of a former president, the hassle and expense of hiring consultants to manage the server might be worth it.

For the average Joe, however, not so much.

[proxy_user]

Email is in fact a very light process. You could run an email server on the regular computer you use, and it would take 1% of the CPU and 1% of the network bandwidth. The main problem is configuration.

[capydick]

I would think they would have needed a full time IT person to manage this thing - who was paying that person and what kind of security clearance did they have?

And - imagine if that person was on the payroll of the Clinton Foundation slush fund?

[nascarnation]

[Sgt_Schultze]

You could demand a search of all .gov addresses for all communications from clintonemail.com - we’d know shortly if everything she’d sent has been turned over. If just a single email turns up that was not on the list of those she “volunteered” it should be certain there are others that have also been destroyed. The drive should be confiscated and a forensic reconstruction should commence without delay.

[oldbrowser]

She is clearly hiding her communications from the government. There could be many reasons to do so.

We have to look at the persons history and character to surmise what those reasons might be.

[gwgn02]

Shady as F!@#

[Cyman]

Setting up your own email server is child’s play. Setting up a secure email server is dependent on proper implementation of software and hardware and a huge amount of luck that someone out in the cyber world doesn’t decide your web address is worth their effort.

When I was a kid the universal motto about the safety of your car was that you couldn’t stop someone from stealing it, if they wanted it bad enough. That credo has been proven time and time again in the digital age.

[Tea Party Terrorist]

The middle one isn’t a Clinton, but a Hubbell.

[nascarnation]

Webb lives in Charlotte
the baby’s name is Charlotte

coincidence?

[Talisker]

Webb lives in Charlotte
the baby’s name is Charlotte

coincidence?

Wow, good catch!

[__rvx86]

I run an e-mail system on an old computer; enforcing TLS, and forcing authentication from external networks cuts down on almost all of the spam...the only reason I keep port 110/tcp open is for my blog platform’s e-mail posting feature. (They’ve had this feature for YEARS, and still no TLS support. smh.)