5 ms·

Email Forwarding Is Bad: Why you should never forward email

19 points by geocrasher 5y ago

jdlyga 5y ago
Better Headline: "Email Is Bad" It's the worst way of communicating with people. Personal messages get lost in a sea of receipts and marketing emails. Conversation chains are hard to follow, and it's so easy to lose or not be aware of important bits of information.
- millzlane 5y ago
  If you treat it like real mail it works better.
  - cconover 5y ago
    If you treat it like real mail it ends up exactly the way the OP describes: a few high-value messages at risk of being lost in a deluge of low-value, often unsolicited, noise. My real mail is so full of stuff I don’t want and don’t care about that it makes me resistant to looking at it at all - in fact, the only reason I do (and irresponsibly infrequently at that) is because of mail that occasionally arrives that has legal or financial implications. I think it’s reasonable to expect that sender-controlled messaging ends up in this state, particularly when the messaging platform is incentivized to support this model. ETA: typo fixes
- buster 5y ago
  Honestly I don't know how you are using mail but I feel it's the best way of asynchronous communication. You have so many options and tools, I don't know how one could possibly use it the completely wrong way...
- leephillips 5y ago
  Conversations are pretty easy to follow if you don’t use the broken clients from Google or Microsoft: https://lwn.net/Articles/837960/ https://lwn.net/Articles/837960/
- geocrasher 5y ago
  OP/Author here. Mail is fine. Or, was. The problem is that it's based on a 50 year old paradigm of trust (ARPANET) but has the unwashed masses using it (Internet) where there is no inherent trust. So, that trust model had to be added on after the fact, which was too late. So email was great. Humans abused it to death.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    I love that you never quite managed to disagree with the comment you responded to... Given that we're using the internet, not ARPANET, email kinda sucks, right? (I've sent 5 and received ~20 today)
    - geocrasher 5y ago
      You're right. I don't disagree with the comment. I just have very specific reasons for agreeing ;-)
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    Why did you put a false claim as your article title?
    - geocrasher 5y ago
      It's not false. It matches the subject of the article in a subjective manner.
vgel 5y ago
As far as I can tell if you use a service like ImprovMX (not affiliated, just a customer), this shouldn't be an issue, because the email is forwarded by their service instead of your server. This page seems to suggest that, since they're filtering spam to protect their deliverability rates, not yours: https://improvmx.com/guides/emails-refused-spamhaus/ https://improvmx.com/guides/emails-refused-spamhaus/ This also seems like a fairly obvious fix for email providers, to detect forwarded mail and assign blame to the real sender? Idk.
leephillips 5y ago
The article is not about “why you should never forward email”. Forwarding email is fine. It’s about why you should not set up automatic forwarding rules into a provider like Google or Hotmail, which is excellent advice. It’s an interesting variation of the clickbait technique. Put an obviously false statement in the headline, over an article that does not claim what the headline does.
- geocrasher 5y ago
  I appreciate your feedback and that you read the article. I wouldn't say it's clickbait, but rather that it's subjective. Within the context of the article (forwarding all email to pretty much anywhere), forwarding email IS bad. Granted, it's not universally true in every single context. But that doesn't make it any less correct ;)
  - leephillips 5y ago
    First of all, the advice in the article is valuable. But the reader does not see the title of an article in the context of the not-read-yet article, so if it’s generally false, then it’s false. And “pretty much anywhere” is not true either; if I forwarded all mail to my own server, nobody would know about it but me. But no harm done. Personally, I’m not as offended as some seem to be about clickbait.
    - geocrasher 5y ago
      Indeed, in your case the point is moot. Forwarding to yourself is fine because you generally trust yourself. In fact when I teach this subject at my company, I even mention that. Perhaps I'll edit the article to point that out, so thanks for your comment. As for the title, I do see what you're saying. It's definitely a purposefully broad statement that's designed to pique someone's curiosity. But, the article explains the context of the subject in full. Clickbait usually leaves the reader wondering why the subject says what it does.
      - leephillips 5y ago
prepend 5y ago
I forward tons of email from my custom domain to both gmail and hotmail addresses and don’t have the problem author describes. I’ve been doing it since before 2003 and it’s great. Retrieving email from 300 addresses is a huge pain to set up and keep working. Forwarding email from 300 addresses is easy
- Anunayj 5y ago
  Honestly I don't even get what the author is getting at. You don't block a entire domain because a mail, missing DKIM/SPF record, has a FROM: header of a domain, and is scammy, you mark the IP address of the forwarder as scammy. Infact my email forwarder doesn't even change the from header, all gmail sees is mail from my forwarder's IP address, (which I have manually marked as trusted) from scammer to my mail. Ofc this means my forwarding service has low deliverability, But I don't use it for sending outgoing mail.
  - geocrasher 5y ago
    What I'm getting at is this: If you forward an email from y our personal domain to another provider, every email you get that is spam is re-sent to the forwarded address, and that provider will see your FROM address as being the source of the spam, and it will cause mail deliverability issues for forwarded mail. I've seen it over, and over, and over again. That's why I wrote it.
    - prepend 5y ago
      When I forward, I don’t change the FROM address, I keep it intact. It’s not a literal email forward with “FWD:” in the subject line. It just replaces the To: and sends it to the new address. Maybe you have your forwarding set up incorrectly, but with the forwarding I set up through cpanel, this isn’t an issue. This is one of the funny things about the email spec is that the FROM field can be set to anything, so it’s really handy for forwarding.

19 points by geocrasher 5y ago

Better Headline: "Email Is Bad" It's the worst way of communicating with people. Personal messages get lost in a sea of receipts and marketing emails. Conversation chains are hard to follow, and it's so easy to lose or not be aware of important bits of information.

millzlane 5y ago
If you treat it like real mail it works better.
- cconover 5y ago
  If you treat it like real mail it ends up exactly the way the OP describes: a few high-value messages at risk of being lost in a deluge of low-value, often unsolicited, noise. My real mail is so full of stuff I don’t want and don’t care about that it makes me resistant to looking at it at all - in fact, the only reason I do (and irresponsibly infrequently at that) is because of mail that occasionally arrives that has legal or financial implications. I think it’s reasonable to expect that sender-controlled messaging ends up in this state, particularly when the messaging platform is incentivized to support this model. ETA: typo fixes
buster 5y ago
Honestly I don't know how you are using mail but I feel it's the best way of asynchronous communication. You have so many options and tools, I don't know how one could possibly use it the completely wrong way...
leephillips 5y ago
Conversations are pretty easy to follow if you don’t use the broken clients from Google or Microsoft: https://lwn.net/Articles/837960/ https://lwn.net/Articles/837960/
geocrasher 5y ago
OP/Author here. Mail is fine. Or, was. The problem is that it's based on a 50 year old paradigm of trust (ARPANET) but has the unwashed masses using it (Internet) where there is no inherent trust. So, that trust model had to be added on after the fact, which was too late. So email was great. Humans abused it to death.
- klyrs 5y ago
  I love that you never quite managed to disagree with the comment you responded to... Given that we're using the internet, not ARPANET, email kinda sucks, right? (I've sent 5 and received ~20 today)
  - geocrasher 5y ago
    You're right. I don't disagree with the comment. I just have very specific reasons for agreeing ;-)
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  Why did you put a false claim as your article title?
  - geocrasher 5y ago
    It's not false. It matches the subject of the article in a subjective manner.

vgel 5y ago

As far as I can tell if you use a service like ImprovMX (not affiliated, just a customer), this shouldn't be an issue, because the email is forwarded by their service instead of your server. This page seems to suggest that, since they're filtering spam to protect their deliverability rates, not yours: https://improvmx.com/guides/emails-refused-spamhaus/ https://improvmx.com/guides/emails-refused-spamhaus/ This also seems like a fairly obvious fix for email providers, to detect forwarded mail and assign blame to the real sender? Idk.

leephillips 5y ago

The article is not about “why you should never forward email”. Forwarding email is fine. It’s about why you should not set up automatic forwarding rules into a provider like Google or Hotmail, which is excellent advice. It’s an interesting variation of the clickbait technique. Put an obviously false statement in the headline, over an article that does not claim what the headline does.

geocrasher 5y ago
I appreciate your feedback and that you read the article. I wouldn't say it's clickbait, but rather that it's subjective. Within the context of the article (forwarding all email to pretty much anywhere), forwarding email IS bad. Granted, it's not universally true in every single context. But that doesn't make it any less correct ;)
- leephillips 5y ago
  First of all, the advice in the article is valuable. But the reader does not see the title of an article in the context of the not-read-yet article, so if it’s generally false, then it’s false. And “pretty much anywhere” is not true either; if I forwarded all mail to my own server, nobody would know about it but me. But no harm done. Personally, I’m not as offended as some seem to be about clickbait.
  - geocrasher 5y ago
    Indeed, in your case the point is moot. Forwarding to yourself is fine because you generally trust yourself. In fact when I teach this subject at my company, I even mention that. Perhaps I'll edit the article to point that out, so thanks for your comment. As for the title, I do see what you're saying. It's definitely a purposefully broad statement that's designed to pique someone's curiosity. But, the article explains the context of the subject in full. Clickbait usually leaves the reader wondering why the subject says what it does.
    - leephillips 5y ago

prepend 5y ago

I forward tons of email from my custom domain to both gmail and hotmail addresses and don’t have the problem author describes. I’ve been doing it since before 2003 and it’s great. Retrieving email from 300 addresses is a huge pain to set up and keep working. Forwarding email from 300 addresses is easy

Anunayj 5y ago
Honestly I don't even get what the author is getting at. You don't block a entire domain because a mail, missing DKIM/SPF record, has a FROM: header of a domain, and is scammy, you mark the IP address of the forwarder as scammy. Infact my email forwarder doesn't even change the from header, all gmail sees is mail from my forwarder's IP address, (which I have manually marked as trusted) from scammer to my mail. Ofc this means my forwarding service has low deliverability, But I don't use it for sending outgoing mail.
- geocrasher 5y ago
  What I'm getting at is this: If you forward an email from y our personal domain to another provider, every email you get that is spam is re-sent to the forwarded address, and that provider will see your FROM address as being the source of the spam, and it will cause mail deliverability issues for forwarded mail. I've seen it over, and over, and over again. That's why I wrote it.
  - prepend 5y ago
    When I forward, I don’t change the FROM address, I keep it intact. It’s not a literal email forward with “FWD:” in the subject line. It just replaces the To: and sends it to the new address. Maybe you have your forwarding set up incorrectly, but with the forwarding I set up through cpanel, this isn’t an issue. This is one of the funny things about the email spec is that the FROM field can be set to anything, so it’s really handy for forwarding.