Email Changes Coming Soon

[Xepher]

So xepher.net is running a bit like the Voyager probes. Long past their expected lifetime, and so we have to narrow mission scope to keep things going. In the past few years, the bulk of my pain-points with continuing things has been around email. More specifically, with various other services blacklisting xepher.net as a "spam source." Mostly I think this is the fault of having such low volume email: One spam message in a month makes this server's message output 5%+ spam (because we send so few messages.) So I think we're getting trapped by heuristics that don't really apply. But also, that's the reality and I can't get google/yahoo/msn/etc. to change their behavior.

That said, I want to work on fixing the issue in the long run. To that end, I want to know who is actually USING email services here. This question comes in several parts:

1) Are you using xepher.net email directly (e.g. user@xepher.net)
2) Are you using a virtual domain (user@mywebsite.com, which is hosted by xepher.net)
3) Are you SENDING email from either of the two above?
3a) If so, which ones? Both?
4) Are you sending email here some other way? (Possibly a violation/problem, possibly not.)

What I'm considering is spooling up an independent mailserver VM for xepher.net, such that you'll need to log into it directly (for both sending and receiving) but that will negate the worry that infected wordpress installs and similar are somehow sending spam from the only "official" server and getting us blacklisted. Also, with a separate server, all transactions will be fully logged (not content, just sender+datetime) so that if/when spam is detected, it can be shut down quickly and connected with the compromised account.

Please let me know if you're in the emailing using category, but also if you have any other thoughts or concerns around this. Thanks!