How to use Gmail to destroy your relationship with your investors and customers

http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Dont-Forward-Google-Apps-to-Gmail.html

by onecreativenerd • 14 years ago

154 154 14 years ago

iamnotaprogrammer.com

i.e. beware creating an email black hole.

keiferski2• 14 years ago

The title is a bit hyperbolic, and would more accurately be "Check your spam box for important emails".

niggler2• 14 years ago

That's not good enough in this case. The problem here, as I understood it, was that spam in the work email wasn't coming into the personal email in the first place, rendering the personal email incomplete. You would have to check all of the spam boxes.

keiferski2• 14 years ago

Fair enough. The article is just titled to obnoxiously grab attention "Gmail is ruining your company!" instead of "Gmail forwarding doesn't always work" or something similar.

But hey, it's at the top of HN, so it must have worked.

recoiledsnake• 14 years ago

Google's spam filter seems to be having more issues these days. I used to ignore the spam filter, but got a reminder email which forced me to check the spam folder, and lo behold there was the email. I always open emails from that person and Gmail marks it as important, I wonder how it could possibly classify it as spam(assuming the email servers remained the same). The funny part was that just a few days prior I read a comment on HN warning about the spam filter and I had been meaning to check the spam folder but didn't.

rabidsnail2• 14 years ago

I've been getting increasingly fed up with gmail, but not quite to the point of making me set up exim. Does anybody know of a mail server I can throw on ec2 and forget about?

niggler2• 14 years ago

I dont think this is a good idea -- if ec2 goes down (as it has in the past) you risk losing email

sbierwagen2• 14 years ago

Many blacklists include all the EC2 addresses: for obvious reasons, they get used to send spam a lot.

DanBC13• 14 years ago

The answer to "Gmail drops some wanted messages into the spam folder" is definitely not "set up exim" nor "set up [insert email server here]".

There's a reason that people running servers at that level (from that time) are called BOFH.

aed• 14 years ago

Gmail's handling of multiple accounts is just about the poorest I've seen in any email client. Even Microsoft Outlook handles multiple accounts better!

ebcase• 14 years ago

Mailplane 3 (for Mac) is a great solution to this problem — http://beta.mailplaneapp.com/kb/getting-started/welcome-to-m...

DeepDuh• 14 years ago

How about Mail.app?

pkamb3• 14 years ago

The worst is their abysmal "On Behalf of:" handling when sending as an @gmail.com address from another @gmail.com address. There is no way around having your "main" email end up in plaintext in the header of every email you send as the "anonymous" email. And anyone replying to you via Outlook replies to the main address. You can send as @yahoo or @hotmail addresses with no evidence of your main gmail account, but for some reason they don't let you with a second gmail address.

gabemart2• 14 years ago

Where does this "On Behalf of:" text appear? I just tested this, and sending an "on behalf of" email to another gmail account doesn't result in this text appearing anywhere in the gmail client. The original mail address appears in the headers under "Sender:" with the alias mail address appearing under "From:". However, if you open the email in gmail and don't check the headers manually, there's no indication it's not from the alias address. Replying to such an email, the "To:" field populates properly with the alias address.

ams61104• 14 years ago

Probably because they really don't want you to have other accounts, they want all your email are belong to us.

mmastrac• 14 years ago

If you want to do this reliably, don't use the GMail auto-forward stuff. Instead, create yourself a _filter_ with the following definition:

Matches: -{"X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*"} Do this: Skip Inbox, Forward to XXX, Delete it

Your other GMail account will take care of the spam that gets forwarded.

I've been doing this for more than a year, with nothing ending up in the account's Spam folder.

dylanvee• 14 years ago

What kind of magic expression is that?

koko775• 14 years ago

http://www.eicar.org/86-0-Intended-use.html

It's designed to be automatically flagged as a virus, without actually being a virus. I found this with a simple Googling; you can too!

7a1c9427• 14 years ago

I suffered from this and now have set up a filter on the forwarding account that goes something like: 'Matches: from:(*) Do this: Never send it to Spam' so it forwards absolutely all email. My personal account then dumps then filters stuff in to spam folder that I do check.

tghw3• 14 years ago

I ran into this problem as well. So, now, as standard practice, when I set up forwarding between GMail accounts, I add a single filter to the account being forwarded:

    Matches: -96f0f0036730a7d970a678e8f933e8b7
    Do this: Never send it to Spam

The string is just a random hex string, the minus (-) tells it to match all messages that do not contain this string. No message should ever contain it, so no message should ever be sent to spam in the original account. Once it gets to the end account, GMail will still filter it and put it in Spam if it is spam.

spindritf• 14 years ago

That's clever but you can just match is:spam and never send those to spam, essentially turning off the spam filter, not bypassing it.

    Matches: is:spam
    Do this: Never send it to Spam

tghw3• 14 years ago

Unfortunately, you can't use "in:", "is:", "label:", or "has:star" in filters. Filters are applied before these things are determined. If you try to, you get the following message from GMail:

Filter searches containing "label:", "in:", "is:", or stars criteria (i.e. "has:yellow-star") are not recommended as they will never match incoming mail. Do you still wish to continue to the next step?

epikur• 14 years ago

Is that the same as marking things "Not Spam"? As in, does it lower the quality of Gmail's spam filter?

aprescott• 14 years ago

I specifically tested for this when consolidating various Gmail addresses behind an Apps account, and my fix was similar: a match on * seems to include spam.

It's slightly bizarre that the email forwarding you can configure in settings would not skip all spam checks, and not even indicate as much.

vl• 14 years ago

A lot of people forward their email through gmail account exactly because of this feature - to filter out spam, since gmail filter is one of the best.

jimstr• 14 years ago

I did this as well, and it has been working great for me for a few years. A month ago I noticed by chance that it had stopped forwarding 12 hours earlier for no apparent reason. Deleting the rule and recreating it got it working, but it got me thinking of doing a more robust solution.

mike-cardwell• 14 years ago

Would probably be a good idea for Google to add an "Include spam?" checkbox in the forwarding settings. Checked by default if the destination address is within gmail, otherwise unchecked by default.

ams61104• 14 years ago

Personally I think if you turn on forwarding at the account level, everything should be forwarded straight away and no filters or spam processing should be done.

If you forward a filtered set of emails (if that's even possible in gmail) then you presumably know what you're asking for.

pyre5• 14 years ago

The joke is that filtering seems to happen prior to spam classification, so you can use filtering to get around this oversight (there are example cited above).

beering• 14 years ago

Just check two different accounts. You don't gain much by forwarding from one to the other, but the potential to screw up is higher.

Nux• 14 years ago

You don't even need to do much, GMail top posts by default without a way to disable this retarded behaviour.

DanBC13• 14 years ago

> this retarded behaviour.

HN has an international audience. While the word retarded appears to be common in the US it's an offensive slur in other parts of the world; especially the UK.

Please, I'm not telling you not to use it, but I am gently asking you to consider using some other word instead.

phpnode2• 14 years ago

Come on, it's absolutely mundane and non offensive to call a thing or a behaviour retarded, it's really only offensive when talking about disabled or unintelligent people. For example:

    "Steven Hawking is retarded" == offensive
    
    "The design of this chair is retarded" == inoffensive

songgao• 14 years ago

I usually set the new Gmail to retrieve email by POP/IMAP from old one, and have a filter defined in the old one:

    Matches: from:(*)
    Do this: Never send it to Spam, Exclude from SmartLabel categorization

In this way, every single email is forwarded to the new account and filters in the new one deals with spams or whatever. But you can always conveniently check mistakenly spammed emails in your new account.

thrownaway24243• 14 years ago

If you never interact with a gmail account, the spam filtering isn't going to work very well. It can't tell what you've read or skipped, and you never compose anything, so it doesn't know who are your real correspondents. That's why forwarding in this way is a bad idea.

pearkes5• 14 years ago

I use Chrome's incognito feature to manage multiple email accounts.

My work Google account goes in an incognito window, personal Google account goes in the standard window.

I've found this works really well, and the different colors help my mind remember which environment I'm in.

thrownaway24243• 14 years ago

Did you know Chrome has multiple profile support? It's under Settings -> Users. After you've got more than one user, there's a quick-user-switch icon in Chrome's title bar.

aidos• 14 years ago

You can actually sign in to multiple google accounts and switch between them (at least for email / docs - not analytics / other services). I can't remember exactly how to do it, I think you need to enable multiple sign in on the account first.

pearkes5• 14 years ago

They certainly do. I've found that feature to be pretty buggy, personally. Command + tilde is faster than clicking a drop down and waiting for the switch.

k-mcgrady2• 14 years ago

Pretty sure you can use two regular windows to run separate accounts (although the colour coding would be useful). Another option is running multiple user profiles in Chrome.

pearkes5• 14 years ago

Cookies are shared between standard windows (unless there's a way to disable that).

Haven't looked into the profiles. Speed of switching would be the most important thing for me.

biafra• 14 years ago

I use Fluid (http://www.fluidapp.com/) with Separate Cookie Storage for my gmail accunts. (And also for separate facebook, xing, linkedin etc. accounts)

sbierwagen2• 14 years ago

"Man Fucks Up Email Configuration, Blames Gmail"

If only HN had mods, who could perhaps edit linkbait titles.

k-mcgrady2• 14 years ago

Did you read the article? He didn't blame Google. He blamed himself [1][2] and alerted others to a mistake he made that they might make too.

[1] "So what I realized is that I had made a fatal mistake by forwarding my email" [2] "But, I’m not trying to blame Google for this"

Edit: Also, the title doesn't blame Gmail either. "How to use Gmail..." implies that it's something you the user can do not something Gmail does.

AceJohnny2• 14 years ago

or more truthfully: Man fucks up mail configuration in a non-obvious way, does not blame Gmail.

lucb1e• 14 years ago

Yes, and this is why I don't really advertise any other e-mail than my personal e-mail, though I reserved a couple real-name addresses for when there is a real need. Good thing I don't really need a work email as a student yet...

paulrademacher• 14 years ago

> To be more efficient, I started forwarding my work email running on Google Apps to my personal email at Gmail. This is pretty common. All of the devs at my previous company handled their email this way. Why log in to two places, right?

This is a terrible practice. Work mail will be full of confidential information which shouldn't be mixed with your personal files, especially after your employment ends.

philip1209• 14 years ago

Does anybody have a suggestion for a simple email forwarding service for random domains? e.g., if I own example.com, is there a simple way with high uptime to forward all incoming email to all addresses to an email account at a separate domain?

thrownaway24243• 14 years ago

These kind of "catch-all" domain forwarders are a terrible idea.

msh• 14 years ago

Use a Google Apps account to host mx for all the domains, no need to use forwarders. It's what I do.

bosch5• 14 years ago

People who do this are really annoying and have no concepts of separating business and personal life. If you don't mix business with pleasure then why are you doing it with your e-mail? How hard is it to check two accounts or have two accounts setup on your phone? There are some lines where business and personal shouldn't cross and e-mail is one of them.

How does the appearance look? You send e-mail to foo@business.com and then funkyjizzbeats20@gmail.com replies to you! What could be more professional than that?

Also, what about security? How would people feel to know you've forwarded an e-mail they sent to a business account to your personal account? Is this just something no one thinks about?

MiguelHudnandez3• 14 years ago

Gmail allows you to send from your other email addresses through the web interface. It is nice having multiple accounts in the same mailbox so they can share labels.

I don't think it's a violation of trust to have mail forwarded from one account to another account on the same provider. Email does not have an implied amount of security or privacy. Sending email is like sending a postcard--Anyone involved in its transit has the opportunity to read it.

Encosia• 14 years ago

Unless things have changed recently, sending as an address other than the Gmail account you're sending from results in a tacky "On Behalf Of" clause that displays both addresses to the recipient.

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

I'd say it is more analogous to regular first-class mail in an envelope. There is some expectation of privacy, but no guarantee.

bosch5• 14 years ago

Ok, so I'm sure you won't mind then if you send an e-mail to csr@myhealthprovider.com with your latest lab results and someone replies from their personal Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo? More importantly, why would you have e-mails from multiple people in the different inbox's? If you're allowed to check your e-mail at work then keep your family/friends using your personal account and your business contacts using your work one.

Your comment about security is extremely disturbing. You're right people can intercept it, however, if I send an e-mail to someone at a company and they forward it to their personal account, that's the minute I stop doing business with that company.

I get the appeal of combining them, but it's sloppy and too many people take the easy way out instead of being professional.

Read underwater's comment as well. He has some good points.

codeka• 14 years ago

Plus, Gmail lets you be logged in to two accounts from two different tabs in the same browser. Though usually I actually set up two separate browser profiles entirely, it's really not that hard to keep business and personal separate.

ef45• 14 years ago

> How does the appearance look? You send e-mail to foo@business.com and then funkyjizzbeats20@gmail.com replies to you! What could be more professional than that?

If you configure your GMail account correctly, it will reply via the other account's own SMTP servers. There will be no evidence of your private GMail account, even in the headers. (This is not the same thing as just configuring GMail to set a particular "From:" address.)

> Also, what about security?

If both accounts are hosted by Google, then unless you're doing something stupid with one of the passwords they're pretty much equally secure.

If your business account has privileges within the app domain, you might actually get a security benefit by not being logged into it all the time. Kinda like not being logged in as root all the time.

im3w1l2• 14 years ago

How would I make gmail use the smtp servers?

bosch5• 14 years ago

This is beside the point, as soon as it's in your personal e-mail account not only has privacy been breached but Google's data mining it.

underwater• 14 years ago

There may also be liability when you leave the job as you're retaining copies of data that doesn't belong to you.

Not to mention that in the case of a lawsuit you might be required to give access to relevant emails. Mixing personal and professional accounts could quickly get messy.

bosch5• 14 years ago

^^^ This x1000, all of the kids starting businesses and using the cool new thing Google Apps and forwarding it to their personal Gmail account have no concept of this.

pyre5• 14 years ago

Is 'funkyjizzbeats20' a typo for 'funkyjazzbeats20'?

hinathan• 14 years ago

That's the joke.

driverdan• 14 years ago

Most startup founders do not have a separation of business and personal life or have very little separation. When setup properly outgoing emails will be sent from the correct address. There are no security concerns, someone can easily download all their mail if they're trying to get a copy.

bosch5• 14 years ago

It depends, if they're starting a company then they should be setup separately from the start. You can't honestly tell me that you want Frank from the call center at your health provider getting a copy of your health records that you just sent in to his personal Gmail account?

If they're simply creating something to make some extra money then sure you could use the same account, but to be taken professionally you should keep them separate.

durkie• 14 years ago

why did he receive the "wanted to check in one more time" email? strange that he missed the initial email, but then received the second one.

mylittlepony2• 14 years ago

A little bird told me about something called Thunderbird.

statictype• 14 years ago

Did it tell you that Thunderbird is seeing its sunset?

mylittlepony2• 14 years ago

It just works. I don't need new features.

stretchwithme• 14 years ago

For very important email, consider using an email address that is not published on the web and that is difficult to guess. Search on the user name of your address to make sure there are no results.

Only when you decide that someone is both important and trusted, have them use that email address.

hybrid11• 14 years ago

A better way of doing this is to create a filter that forwards everything to your personal Gmail, then create another filter in your personal Gmail account to label it.

eisa01• 14 years ago

The spam filter in Gmail is too aggressive. I've actually gotten interview confirmations in my spam folder (!), which I was lucky to notice.

And I just checked my spam folder and found three legitimate emails. They were from Linked in, glassdoor and HBO. Google really needs to improve.

edit: Make that Udacity as well..

disgruntledphd2• 14 years ago

Sorry about the Linkedin one (it was partially mine, and other like me's, fault).

You see, I signed up for many Linkedin groups and then realised that they were sending me too many emails. I removed all of the emails in Linkedin and then found that this would take at least a week before I stopped getting the emails. I waited two weeks, the emails had not stopped and so I classified them as spam.

The issue is that Google is using collaborative filtering, which will tend to weight such emails more highly as spam given that I and others have noted them as spam. Its normally quite effective, but you do need to check your spam box quite often. This isn't because the algorithm doesnt work, its just because of noise created by people using the spam button inappropriately for your use cases.

orangethirty• 14 years ago

After reading this thread I went over to my gmail spam filter. Five business opportunities right there waiting in the spam folder for a reply.Gmail was the last Google service I was using, but I must now depart for better pastures. Hello nuuton email. You have just been borned.

rbanffy• 14 years ago

Why would anyone want to forward work e-mail to a personal account when both are on Gmail? I would understand if the work e-mail messages were on a server that cannot be accessed from outside the office (although, if such a policy exists, you should ask yourself why and, probably, not auto-forward it) or something with a horrible and confusing interface or very limited space, but not here.

ww520• 14 years ago

The root cause of the problem is the hassle in dealing with multiple email accounts. OP decided to consolidate by forwarding emails from multiple accounts int one. I found the WebMail Notifier add-on for Firefox invaluable when dealing with multiple email accounts. It let me keep the accounts separate yet able to see new emails in them and login to multiple accounts with ease. There's no need to consolidate, just managing them better.

pyre5• 14 years ago

If you fetch/read mail locally, you can get around this by pulling down emails from the spam folder directly via IMAP.

Hotmail email forwarding has this same issue, but only has POP access, so you can only access the inbox without the web interface. You can tune down the aggressiveness of the spam filter to a minimum (but not turn it completely off).

staunch• 14 years ago

I keep two tabs open, one for work and one personal.

First I login to: https://mail.google.com/

Then I login to https://mail.google.com/a/domain.com

Works great if you do it like that, better than if you try clicking "Switch accounts" or whatever.

notJim• 14 years ago

The switching accounts thing adds a url param too, although it's kind of a drag because the accounts will switch if you log in in a different order.

iomike• 14 years ago

Why should anyone invest in you, when you can't figure out Gmail?

How to use Gmail to destroy your relationship with your investors and customers

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