Thus said [email protected] on Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:05:57 -0000: > I am considering running my own email domain/server.
Good luck. > Will the VPS "see" my email this way, relaying off the VPS server to my > local one? The current state of SMTP is such that you should assume that it can be read along the way. It doesn't matter that Google[1] claims that 99% of all SMTP traffic that they observe is using TLS. Almost no server MTA rejects clients using unencrypted SMTP. Almost no client MTA refuses to deliver to a server MTA that has misconfigured TLS (e.g. expired, unrecognized CA, mismatched name, etc.) and are susceptible to MITM. A server MTA cannot guarantee that the client MTA was not compromised with MITM. If you want privacy in email then you and your communicants should encrypt before sending. I could be wrong. [1] https://transparencyreport.google.com/safer-email/overview
