Automatic forwards are breaking email delivery.
For years, it’s been common to get email on one email address and automatically forward it to another. You could have several email addresses, either on your own email domain or on free services, and send it all to a single email account.
These days, it’s a quick way to lose it.
My pal Randy Cassingham discussed this recently in respect to the impact it’s having on his newsletter, and I want to expand on the topic because it applies to so many situations.
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Email forwarding no more
Email forwarding used to be a simple way to manage multiple addresses, but now it can lead to lost messages. Spam filtering and security measures mean forwarded emails may be blocked or marked as spam. Instead, use POP3 to “pull” email or a dedicated email program like Thunderbird or Outlook.
Email forwarding
The concept is simple. Perhaps you have an email address at you@randomisp.com. Maybe you have more than one: newsletters@, banking@, stores@, and so on.
Instead of having a full email account at you@randomisp.com or any of the others, you configure them all to automatically forward to your Gmail account — I’ll use askleotest@gmail.com as my example. When someone sends email to you@randomisp.com, then:
- The randomisp.com mail server receives the message sent to you@randomisp.com.
- The randomisp.com mail server automatically forwards the message to askleotest@gmail.com.
- You sign in to askleotest@gmail.com to read and manage all the email sent to your Gmail address and your randomisp.com address(s).
This has been a common approach to email for a long time, mostly because Gmail is likely to have a better spam filter and more powerful user interface than randomisp.com.
This approach has broken, and here’s why.
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Forward one, forward all
Every email sent to you@randomisp.com is forwarded to Gmail.
Every email.
Including spam.
Unfortunately, this makes randomisp.com look like a huge source of spam to Google (or whatever service you’re forwarding to). As a result, Google may decide that randomisp.com’s reputation is in the toilet. Eventually, it will assume that most, if not all, email sent from randomisp.com should be treated as spam.
Your forwarded email may land in your spam folder, or it may not be delivered at all.
It gets worse.
Permission to send
Let’s say I send a newsletter. (Spoiler: I do.)
That newsletter comes “From:” leo@askleo.com, and it’s sent by my newsletter-sending service, Aweber.
SPF, or Sender Policy Framework, allows me to tell the world who is allowed to send email on my behalf. DKIM, or Domain Keys Identified Mail, can also be used to confirm that an authorized sender is indeed the originator of the message. Between the two, the following are authorized sources of email from askleo.com:
- aweber.com
- any of my servers (by server name)
- the server hosting askleo.com
You know what’s not in that list? The domain of your forwarded email address. And yes, forwarding “counts” as a sending source checked for authorization.
So if you subscribe to my newsletter using your you@randomisp.com email address, here’s what happens:
- Aweber sends my newsletter to you@randomisp.com.
- Randomisp.com confirms that Aweber is authorized to send email on my behalf.
- Randomisp.com then automatically forwards the message to the example Gmail account (askleotest@gmail.com).
- Gmail looks at the email and notices: “Hey! Randomisp.com is not authorized to send email from askleo.com. This must be spam!”
- Into the spam folder it goes. Or it’s just deleted entirely.
Fetch versus forward
Email forwarding is broken. Don’t use it.
What should you do instead?
In a word: POP3. In a few more words: change the direction of email retrieval.
Using a forward, randomisp.com forwards or “pushes” the email from itself to Gmail.
If, instead, we configure Gmail to “Check mail from other accounts” using POP3, we are requesting to “pull” email from randomisp.com to Gmail.
It makes all the difference. In the second scenario, randomisp.com isn’t “sending” the email; it’s simply holding it until someone comes along and asks for it. That someone — in this example, Gmail — can then fetch the email, pulling it into its own email service.
When pulling email in this manner, none of the obstacles I talked about above — SPF/DKIM or even server reputation — come into play, since randomisp.com isn’t independently sending anything. Gmail is acting just like a desktop email client fetching email using POP3.
I’ve used Gmail throughout this example because Gmail’s implementation is clear. Other online email services may also fetch email from other accounts, but the ramifications are less clear. The important difference is that these services fetch from your email address. Your email address does not forward to them.
Remember how I said Gmail acted like a desktop email client? That’s another solution.
Use a real email program
Another way to avoid this entire scenario is to use a “real” email program like Thunderbird, Microsoft Office’s Outlook, or any of several others.
You can configure that program to:
- Send and receive to and from your email address (you@randomisp.com, in our example above).
- Send and receive to and from your Gmail or other address (askleotest@gmail.com, in our example above).
- Send and receive from other email addresses you may have.
It’s the most powerful solution. Using IMAP to connect to your email, you can even do this on multiple devices, like your computer, your tablet, and your phone, all simultaneously.
The one place forwards still work reliably
Forwards are still useful in one specific scenario: if they’re forwarding to another email address on the same domain.
For example, let’s say that your primary email address is you@randomisp.com.
But let’s also say you want to have a separate email address for someone you do business with to use to contact you. If you create “biz@randomisp.com” and have that forward to “you@randomisp.com”, that’ll work just fine. The email transition from one to the other is all handled internally on the randomisp.com server.
This is something I do often. All email sent to several of my email addresses land in the same inbox, but I can tell where they came from based on which of my email addresses they were sent to. It’s a great way to determine, for example, if that business you gave “biz@randomisp.com” to passed it along to someone they shouldn’t have, such as a marketing list.
Do this
To begin with, blame spammers. Everything I’ve described above is the result of implementing spam-fighting techniques to keep their junk out of our inboxes.
Use forwards judiciously, but remember that forwarding from an email address on one domain to an email address on another domain is likely to be filtered as spam these days. Try to structure your email in such a way that cross-domain forwards aren’t needed.
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