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> I setup an email forwarder to route all email sent to .ws to my regular email address. >Eagerly I typed ben@.ws into the "to" field of gmail and hit send. > T

> I setup an email forwarder to route all email sent to .ws to my regular email address. >Eagerly I typed ben@.ws into the "to" field of gmail and hit send. > The email never hit my inbox. It was lost forever in cyberspace. I think this was just caused by Gmail now working when a message is sent and received at the same account. It just disappears. [0] It’s really annoying, it’s not part of a spec, it’s just gmail. I ran into this because I have some forwarders too and if I send an email from gmail that goes out, when my external mail server sends it back to gmail it never gets there. It’s not deleted, it’s not marked as spam, it just doesn’t exist and there’s no record. I suspect if author had sent from another account it would work fine. [0] https://support.dnsimple.com/articles/troubleshooting-email-forwarding-gmail/ https://support.dnsimple.com/articles/troubleshooting-email-...

wccrawford 6y ago
Can confirm. This bit me recently until I thought to use another account for testing.
mns 6y ago
Exchange also does this, if you are part of a group, send an email to that group, you will never get it. We ran into it when one of our systems were sending an alert for a failed action to a group, but it was sending it on behalf of the person that tried to do that action and eventually failed. Everyone in the group was getting the email, except the original person.
- prepend 6y ago
  That’s not so bad, but it’s not as bad as gmail. Exchange will return a message that comes back to the mailbox via a forward. Also, I think, Exchange is doing this because the list is on server and it’s part of Exchange’s deduping. If I send to the list and foo and foo is in the list, foo gets one email, not two. For example, I have foo@gmail.com, foo@outlook.com, foo@prepend.com. I set up foo@prepend.com to forward to foo@gmail.com. If I send a message from bar@gmail.com to foo@prepend.com, it comes through as expected. If I send the same message from foo@gmail.com, I never get it. Prepend.com’s mail server has a record of sending it to gmail.com, but my gmail account has no evidence of it anywhere. If I change foo@prepend.com to forward to foo@outlook.com, I don’t have this problem.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
abdullahkhalids 6y ago
Is this some sort of abuse protection, where people use gmail as free storage?
- LeonM 6y ago
  Gmail already is free storage, AFAIK it shares you data quota with you Google drive account. Most likely this is a 'mail-loop' prevention. If you setup two accounts that forward to each other, then emails will be stuck in an infinite loop. Inject a couple of multi-megabyte emails into that loop and you can take down the entire service. This is effectively a DOS attack.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    It could also be an implementation detail. Mail messages have a unique identifier. Gmail might just concatenate the mail identifier with your account identifier to use it as a primary key to store your email in the "mails" bigtable. If you send email to yourself, when it comes to put the mail into the mails bigtable, the result will be "primary key already exists, cannot insert"
    - prepend 6y ago
      Maybe similar to this, but it works if my message stays in gmail when I send from my gmail straight to my gmail.
- prepend 6y ago
  I don’t think so as email forwarding is pretty basic and it’s blocked even for tiny messages. I suspect it was just some stupid developer pre-optimizing, thinking they were clever and not thinking through use cases. “Every email from me to me will skip external routing and just get flagged in storage; therefore, any email from and to me and not through that process must be fraud and we’ll just save the user from that and black hole it.”
  - kube-system 6y ago
kureikain 6y ago
This is the most confuse part of gmail. I run an email forwarding service and I got this exact problem. I ended up build a "Test button" where customer click, then we send an email from our own address and let them know why we did that and also link to your link. Gmail is no doubt very useful but they have quite of few of quirks.
tyingq 6y ago
I'm confused, as I'm able to send and also forward messages from myself to myself just fine in gmail. How would I recreate this? Does it only come up for emails coming from outside of gmail?
- prepend 6y ago
  You need a third party in between. That’s what is crazy and took me a long time to debug. If I send from my gmail to myself it works fine. But if I send to an external mail account that redirects back to me it’s gone. You can test this with any mail server you run. You can theoretically run a mail server locally and test it if you have DNS resolution that gmail can see. I use cpanel on one of those countless Linux shared hosts and they have a decent mail admin, I expect any other host will have the same or similar.
- davchana 6y ago
  set up an account two@any.com. Two@any.com forwards every incoming email to one@gmail.com Send an email from one@gmail.com to two@any.com (which will automatically get forwarded back to one@gmail.com). There will be no incoming email back in one@gmail.com. it will disappear at two@any.com
Tyr42 6y ago
Should be in your sent folder right?
- prepend 6y ago
  Yes, but it never gets to inbox. So it looks to the client exactly the same as a broken forward config, or some other bug where the recipient mail server doesn’t error back.
rwmj 6y ago
I don't know if it's related to this, but gmail deduplicates emails based on the Message-Id. This is entirely broken behaviour and causes trouble for us with mailing lists (eg. a mail is sent to the inbox and a mailing list, or sent to two mailing lists). Another in the list of reasons not to use gmail.
- nashashmi 6y ago
  But if you send yourself an email, you will get it? How does deduplication work for that?
hedora 6y ago
This is a “feature”. If an incoming message is “from” the recipient account, and somehow makes it past the spam filter, it puts it in sent. In a perhaps apocryphal story, at least one person was fired when a malicious coworker used this to forge harassing emails from the victim.

wccrawford 6y ago

Can confirm. This bit me recently until I thought to use another account for testing.

mns 6y ago

Exchange also does this, if you are part of a group, send an email to that group, you will never get it. We ran into it when one of our systems were sending an alert for a failed action to a group, but it was sending it on behalf of the person that tried to do that action and eventually failed. Everyone in the group was getting the email, except the original person.

prepend 6y ago
That’s not so bad, but it’s not as bad as gmail. Exchange will return a message that comes back to the mailbox via a forward. Also, I think, Exchange is doing this because the list is on server and it’s part of Exchange’s deduping. If I send to the list and foo and foo is in the list, foo gets one email, not two. For example, I have foo@gmail.com, foo@outlook.com, foo@prepend.com. I set up foo@prepend.com to forward to foo@gmail.com. If I send a message from bar@gmail.com to foo@prepend.com, it comes through as expected. If I send the same message from foo@gmail.com, I never get it. Prepend.com’s mail server has a record of sending it to gmail.com, but my gmail account has no evidence of it anywhere. If I change foo@prepend.com to forward to foo@outlook.com, I don’t have this problem.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

abdullahkhalids 6y ago

Is this some sort of abuse protection, where people use gmail as free storage?

LeonM 6y ago
Gmail already is free storage, AFAIK it shares you data quota with you Google drive account. Most likely this is a 'mail-loop' prevention. If you setup two accounts that forward to each other, then emails will be stuck in an infinite loop. Inject a couple of multi-megabyte emails into that loop and you can take down the entire service. This is effectively a DOS attack.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  It could also be an implementation detail. Mail messages have a unique identifier. Gmail might just concatenate the mail identifier with your account identifier to use it as a primary key to store your email in the "mails" bigtable. If you send email to yourself, when it comes to put the mail into the mails bigtable, the result will be "primary key already exists, cannot insert"
  - prepend 6y ago
    Maybe similar to this, but it works if my message stays in gmail when I send from my gmail straight to my gmail.
prepend 6y ago
I don’t think so as email forwarding is pretty basic and it’s blocked even for tiny messages. I suspect it was just some stupid developer pre-optimizing, thinking they were clever and not thinking through use cases. “Every email from me to me will skip external routing and just get flagged in storage; therefore, any email from and to me and not through that process must be fraud and we’ll just save the user from that and black hole it.”
- kube-system 6y ago

kureikain 6y ago

This is the most confuse part of gmail. I run an email forwarding service and I got this exact problem. I ended up build a "Test button" where customer click, then we send an email from our own address and let them know why we did that and also link to your link. Gmail is no doubt very useful but they have quite of few of quirks.

tyingq 6y ago

I'm confused, as I'm able to send and also forward messages from myself to myself just fine in gmail. How would I recreate this? Does it only come up for emails coming from outside of gmail?

prepend 6y ago
You need a third party in between. That’s what is crazy and took me a long time to debug. If I send from my gmail to myself it works fine. But if I send to an external mail account that redirects back to me it’s gone. You can test this with any mail server you run. You can theoretically run a mail server locally and test it if you have DNS resolution that gmail can see. I use cpanel on one of those countless Linux shared hosts and they have a decent mail admin, I expect any other host will have the same or similar.
davchana 6y ago
set up an account two@any.com. Two@any.com forwards every incoming email to one@gmail.com Send an email from one@gmail.com to two@any.com (which will automatically get forwarded back to one@gmail.com). There will be no incoming email back in one@gmail.com. it will disappear at two@any.com

Tyr42 6y ago

Should be in your sent folder right?

prepend 6y ago
Yes, but it never gets to inbox. So it looks to the client exactly the same as a broken forward config, or some other bug where the recipient mail server doesn’t error back.

rwmj 6y ago

I don't know if it's related to this, but gmail deduplicates emails based on the Message-Id. This is entirely broken behaviour and causes trouble for us with mailing lists (eg. a mail is sent to the inbox and a mailing list, or sent to two mailing lists). Another in the list of reasons not to use gmail.

nashashmi 6y ago
But if you send yourself an email, you will get it? How does deduplication work for that?

hedora 6y ago

This is a “feature”. If an incoming message is “from” the recipient account, and somehow makes it past the spam filter, it puts it in sent. In a perhaps apocryphal story, at least one person was fired when a malicious coworker used this to forge harassing emails from the victim.