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The best way to set up your own Secure Email server

Major email service providers including Google and Microsoft occasionally scan your emails to provide targeted ads and other services. You may be concerned by this as it does violate your privacy. One for the easiest ways to prevent this breach of your privacy is to set up your own secure email server.

Setting up your private email server is fairly easy and once the initial set up is complete, you can further customize it according to your preferences.

What Is a Private Email Secure Server?

Whenever you receive an email, it’s first stored on an email server before being downloaded to your email client and browser. These email servers are usually managed by the same companies that provide with email addresses, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. 

While these services do provide you with the lot of convenience, they can easily scan confidential or regular emails to provide targeted ads and improve services including Google Assistant. Additionally, government entities and law enforcement agencies can ask your email provider to reveal your inbox.

On the other hand, you have complete control over your emails when you use for private email server. This is because the server is located at your own house, on a computer you own.

The glaring advantage for having your own secure email server is privacy. Your emails are completely your own. You can also use one to send completely anonymous on your emails.

You are ISP and your employers are completely devoid for any access to your emails. This provides for the peace of mind that no third-party email providers can match. A private email server allows you to set up filters that are simply not possible when by using the regular email service.

Nevertheless, all this does come at a cost. You are completely responsible for the security of your email server. While your emails can no longer be snooped upon by companies, the server can still be compromised by the determined hacker. Email providers have dedicated teams that look for security flaws in their servers. Nevertheless, in the case for private email server, you are completely responsible for making sure that the server is secure.

What are the pros and cons of a private email server?

As with all tech decisions, you should be aware of both the benefits and drawbacks by using secure email servers:

On the pro side such as:       

• Advanced privacy
• The server is unavailable to your employer and email provider
• More control over email management
• Advanced features for that general email providers lack

On the con side:

• For creating the secure email takes time or effort
• It requires more responsibility (installing software to prevent hacks, learning how to protect for your messages)
• It requires for the hard drive with enough capacity

Basically it is privacy, reliability and security that are the top reasons for creating your private email server.

How to Set Up Your Own Secure Email Server

Setting up your private email server should not be problem at all, provided you follow the steps listed below accurately.

However, before getting started, ensure that you have all the things needed to set up the server such as:

• The separate computer with decent hard drive capacity. This will act as the email server and store all your emails.
• The domain name for your private email server.
• The good and stable internet connection.
• The email server service to route your emails. It should also have features such as a spam filter and antivirus protection.

Download and Install an Email Server

The first thing you need to get started is email server software. There are plenty of programs available. Nevertheless, most of them are paid. For this tutorial, let's make use for the open-source and free email server also called hMailServer. To download the application, simply go to " hMailServer's" download page and click on the file under Latest Release.