I understand that people enter the world of self hosting for various reasons. I am trying to dip my toes in this ocean to try and get away from privacy-offending centralised services such as Google, Cloudflare, AWS, etc.

As I spend more time here, I realise that it is practically impossible; especially for a newcomer, to setup any any usable self hosted web service without relying on these corporate behemoths.

I wanted to have my own little static website and alongside that run Immich, but I find that without Cloudflare, Google, and AWS, I run the risk of getting DDOSed or hacked. Also, since the physical server will be hosted at my home (to avoid AWS), there is a serious risk of infecting all devices at home as well (currently reading about VLANS to avoid this).

Am I correct in thinking that avoiding these corporations is impossible (and make peace with this situation), or are there ways to circumvent these giants and still have a good experience self hosting and using web services, even as a newcomer (all without draining my pockets too much)?

Edit: I was working on a lot of misconceptions and still have a lot of learn. Thank you all for your answers.

  • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
    30·
    6 days ago

    Don’t leave SSH on port 22 open as there are a lot of crawlers for that, otherwise I really can’t say I share your experience, and I have been self-hosting for years.

    • JJLinux@lemmy.mlEnglish
      42·
      6 days ago

      Am I missing something? Why would anyone leave SSH open outside the internal network?

      All of my services have SSH disabled unless I need to do something, and then I only do it locally, and disable as soon as I’m done.

      Note that I don’t have a VPS anywhere.

        • JJLinux@lemmy.mlEnglish
          2·
          5 days ago

          My firewall, server, NAS and all my services have web GUIs. If I need SSH access all I have to do is enable it via web GUI, do what I need to, disable again.

          If push comes to shove, I do have a portable monitor and a keyboard in storage if needed, but have not had the need to use them yet.

      • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
        5·
        6 days ago

        Some people want to be able to reach their server via SSH when they are not at home, but yes I agree in general that is not necessary when running a real home server.

        • JJLinux@lemmy.mlEnglish
          2·
          6 days ago

          Yeah, I guess I’ve never needed to do that. That may change as I’m thinking of moving all my services from UnRaid to ProxMox to leave UnRaid for storage only.

          I guess that’ll bring me back here soon enough.