Forwarding

[Beebes]

I recently signed up for a Fastmail account, and I’m trying to configure it to handle some of my email tasks. A forwarding rule I created does not work as I expect. Details:

I created Fastmail aliases for business correspondents in the form business_name.random_characters@fastmail.com. All my aliases are configured to deliver mail to my Fastmail inbox. I confirmed I can send email from Fastmail and from various non-Fastmail email accounts to my Fastmail aliases, and the email is delivered as expected to my Fastmail inbox.

I also want copies of all email coming into Fastmail to be forwarded to another non-Fastmail account. I want the forwarded email to include all messages sent to my Fastmail aliases and all email sent directly to my primary Fastmail user name (my_name@fastmail.com). I’m not sure what the best way to do this is, but I created the following rule:

If all the following conditions apply
From *
Send a copy to my_name@another_email_provider
Continue to apply other rules [I have no other rules defined]
Apply to New matching messages on arrival.

When I inspect the properties of this rule, I can see that it selects all email in my inbox, which is what I want.

I have also confirmed I can send email from various non-Fastmail accounts to my Fastmail aliases, and those emails are forwarded as I expect to my specified non-Fastmail account.

However, email to my aliases that is not from me is not forwarded. I noticed this when I changed my user profile on a couple of websites I do business with. On those websites, I changed my email from my non-Fastmail email provider to a Fastmail alias. In most respects, those changes seemed to work. I can log into those websites using my Fastmail alias as my user ID. I also received email in my Fastmail inbox from those websites confirming the profile changes. When I open those emails in Fastmail, I can see that they were sent to the Fastmail aliases I defined.

However, those confirmation emails from senders that are not me were not forwarded to my non-Fastmail email account. Right now I see 3 emails from 2 different senders in my Fastmail inbox that I think should have been forwarded. As far as I can tell, they meet the criteria defined in my forwarding rule. The only difference compared to email that was forwarded is that they are not from me.

What do I need to do to make sure all email coming into my Fastmail account is forwarded?

[pjroutledge]

Hi Beebes,
Are you able to check whether the problem is:

• Fastmail not forwarding the emails, or
• the other email service provider rejecting the emails, or perhaps putting them into a Spam/junk folder?

(It's not certain from your post whether the problem is at the Fastmail sending end or the other email provider receiving end.)

[gj15]

Originally Posted by Beebes

I also want copies of all email coming into Fastmail to be forwarded to another non-Fastmail account. I want the forwarded email to include all messages sent to my Fastmail aliases and all email sent directly to my primary Fastmail user name (my_name@fastmail.com).

For the aliases, looking at these instructions https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/aliases.html would adding the non-fastmail address to the "Deliver to:" box achieve what you want? You can have more than one address on the "Deliver to:" line.

[Beebes]

Thanks pjroutledge and gj15 for responding to my question.

I noticed the “Deliver to:” feature for aliases. If it works as described it would solve my problem, though with slightly more work than a single rule that forwards all mail. I will experiment with that feature. Experiments may be slow and tedious, though, because I can’t easily cause my business correspondents to send email to my Fastmail aliases on demand.

It had not occurred to me that the email that appeared not to be forwarded as I expected might have been rejected by the non-Fastmail service (my ISP). The only obvious evidence of such rejection would be my ISP treating the mail as spam and putting it in my spam folder. In the past, I had problems with false positive identifications by spam protection, so I’ve always kept my ISP’s spam protection turned off (which means all incoming mail goes directly to my inbox). And there’s nothing in my ISP spam folder now. I believe for forwarding to work, Fastmail requires spam protection to be enabled. I currently have Fastmail spam protection set to “Move messages with a score of 9.0 or higher to Inbox”. During my limited experiments so far, I don’t think that setting has caused problems. If you think it’s relevant to my mail forwarding issue, let me know.

I have recently had major problems with my ISP’s email service. I was trying to use email subaccounts for the same purpose for which I’m using Fastmail aliases: to associate a unique, easily disabled email address with each business correspondent in order to control spam and help protect my identity. For a period of several months, my ISP’s email maintenance routines automatically disabled some or all of my subaccounts almost every day. I received a deluge of notices that “unusual activity” had been detected on those accounts, but could not get any details concerning the nature of the “unusual activity”. CSRs had no useful advice and resisted escalating the issue. Eventually someone investigated, found a system bug, and fixed it.

During that experience with my ISP, their security department confessed they don’t want to provide email support, and they recommended that I find another email provider. So it’s very unlikely my ISP will help identify the cause of my unforwarded (or unreceived) Fastmail email. In spite of these email disruptions, prior to my recent Fastmail experiments, I have not seen evidence that my ISP rejects email based on the source or content.

I’d like to understand why my Fastmail forwarding rule does not work as I expect. Are there any further steps I can take to identify the cause? Is there any way (such as Fastmail log data) to confirm whether Fastmail forwarded the emails in question? Could the forward/delivery failure have anything to do with the “Enable SRS rewriting” setting for aliases? I have not enabled that setting for any of my aliases, and it’s not clear to me whether it should be enabled based on the behavior I see. (It’s also not clear to me why Fastmail warns against enabling that option “unless you really need it”.) Could there by anything in email headers that might reveal why my forwarding rule didn’t produce the result I expected?

I will continue to experiment with Fastmail. I hope to determine whether Fastmail is reliable and has the features I need so I can transition some or all of my email management from my ISP to Fastmail.

[xyzzy]

Originally Posted by Beebes

I will experiment with that feature. Experiments may be slow and tedious, though, because I can’t easily cause my business correspondents to send email to my Fastmail aliases on demand.

Why does it have to be specifically from them? If you think it has something to do with email from another email services then simply set up a free account on any other email service (e.g., gmail) yourself for testing this problem.

I believe for forwarding to work, Fastmail requires spam protection to be enabled.

Set spam protection's spam level to off (except you cannot turn of "Reject messages from insecure servers").

The way you described your rule in your first post implies to me you may be using the more recent "new" way of creating rules (which I only thought you had to explicitly switch to and not currently the default). So one final suggestion is don't use that method but use the original method instead. Reason is the sieve code is different for your condition.*

When you click create rule you should see "Switch to no-preview rules" to the right of the condition's cancel button. Click that and set the condition to "From email address" "contains" and enter *. Click Continue. Then the "Then" part will appear below. For forwarding check "send a copy" to and fill in the address. "Continue to apply other rules" should also be checked if that's what you want too. Then click save. Finally disable your "old" previously created rule. Click the checkbox next to the rule then click the disable button (or delete to remove it).

---

* For those that wonder why I am suggesting this. The "new" rules for a "From *" condition are coded with a jmapquery with a null test condition while the "old" address :contains "From" "*". I trust the address :contains. The jmapquery with a null test condition, at this time, not so much!

[TenFour]

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are trying to do, but couldn't you just use IMAP or POP to pull all the Fastmail email into the other non-Fastmail account instead of forwarding?

I also want copies of all email coming into Fastmail to be forwarded to another non-Fastmail account. I want the forwarded email to include all messages sent to my Fastmail aliases and all email sent directly to my primary Fastmail user name (my_name@fastmail.com). I’m not sure what the best way to do this is, but I created the following rule:

[Beebes]

Originally Posted by xyzzy

Why does it have to be specifically from them? If you think it has something to do with email from another email services then simply set up a free account on any other email service (e.g., gmail) yourself for testing this problem.

I have several email accounts with different services, and I used them to test Fastmail forwarding before I made my first post here. All email from my own accounts to Fastmail was forwarded as I expected. None of the email I have received in Fastmail from the businesses for which I set up my Fastmail aliases has been forwarded. There may be variables I don’t understand, but it seems that using my own email accounts to test Fastmail forwarding has limited value.

I understand from your post that my Fastmail settings may not be correct.

I was not aware there are “old” and “new” ways of creating rules. I’ve had my Fastmail account for only a few days, and it seems what I'm trying to do is more complicated that I expected. To create my forwarding rule, I selected “Filters & Rules” from the Settings menu, then clicked Create Rule and followed the prompts. I neglected to click on “Switch to no-preview rules (regular expressions supported)”. I’ll fix that oversight, and I’ll post again when I have more results.

Thanks for your help.

[pjroutledge]

Originally Posted by Beebes

If all the following conditions apply
From *
Send a copy to my_name@another_email_provider

In your post you've indicated that you used a wildcard in the From field for the rule.

The instructions in Fastmail help (https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/forward.html) seem to suggest that instead of the wildcard you should select 'All Messages', ie "In the Conditions section, click The sender's email and change this to All messages."

Might be worth a try.

I'm puzzled about how Fastmail is distinguishing between emails from your own accounts and those from your business associates. How could Fastmail know?

[Beebes]

Originally Posted by TenFour

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are trying to do, but couldn't you just use IMAP or POP to pull all the Fastmail email into the other non-Fastmail account instead of forwarding?

I signed up with Fastmail with the goal of moving some or all of my email storage and management off of my ISP and onto an independent email service. I might eventually set up my own web domain and use Fastmail to handle my internet domain’s email. That way I could have a my_name@my_name.com email address that’s permanent and is not tied forever to one ISP or email provider.

I don’t intend to have email forwarded from Fastmail to my current ISP indefinitely. I thought forwarding from Fastmail to my ISP might be a good short-term way to see all my email in one place (on my current ISP) while I learn more about Fastmail and determine how much of my email activity I want to transition to Fastmail. Depending how comfortable I become with Fastmail, I may at some point use Fastmail as my primary email service. Then I could stop forwarding email from Fastmail to my ISP and instead move it in the opposite direction. And, if it seems worth the effort, I could notify all my personal contacts that they should use my Fastmail (or my own web domain) address instead of my old ISP address, and I could stop using my ISP’s email altogether.

I use Microsoft Outlook on Windows 10 to read most email. As you suggest, I could set up an IMAP or POP account in Outlook to retrieve my Fastmail email. That would likely avoid the Fastmail forwarding issues I’ve encountered, so I’ll follow your suggestion.

I remain curious about forwarding, though, because I like to know when I make user errors that I can correct, and I like to understand how things work as well as my technical ability allows. So I’ll continue to experiment with forwarding.

Thanks for your suggestion.

[xyzzy]

Originally Posted by Beebes

None of the email I have received in Fastmail from the businesses for which I set up my Fastmail aliases has been forwarded...but it seems that using my own email accounts to test Fastmail forwarding has limited value.

How could FM know an email sent from some other email service (i.e., some email address that doesn't "belong" to FM) is yours and not someone else? A rule that says "if I get mail from any sender do whatever" is going to be satisfied for all senders.

By the way, FYI, in case you don't already know you can contact FM support through https://www.fastmail.com/support/ using their "ticket" system.

[Beebes]

Originally Posted by xyzzy

How could FM know an email sent from some other email service (i.e., some email address that doesn't "belong" to FM) is yours and not someone else? A rule that says "if I get mail from any sender do whatever" is going to be satisfied for all senders.

I asked myself the same question because the behavior I see and described in my previous posts seems impossible. User error seems likely. I'm going to follow your earlier suggestions about rule creation to see if that resolves my issue.

I've also tried to verify I did not make an obvious mistake such as enabling forwarding *after* I received (in Fastmail) the mail I expected to be forwarded. Looking at my Fastmail inbox right now, I see an email timestamped Saturday 8:29 AM that I sent to one of my aliases. Fastmail forwarded it to my ISP, and I saw it in my inbox there less than a minute later.

Another message in my Fastmail inbox, timestamped Saturday 10:48 AM, sent to the same alias by a company I do business with, has not appeared in my ISP inbox.

I need to take a break from email today, but I will try to fix my forwarding rule by following your suggestions, and I will also follow another poster's suggestion that I use POP or IMAP to retrieve Fastmail email instead of forwarding it to my ISP. I will post again when I have more to report.

Thanks again for your help.

[n5bb]

Unfortunately, email forwarding can no longer be reliably done due to SPF, DMARC, and other anti-spoofing features which many email providers have started using over the past couple of years. The problem is the From domain of the original message and limitations placed on which servers are allowed to send messages for that domain. This has nothing to do with Fastmail and the forwarding process itself, but is an industry trend adopted by many large email providers to stop spoofing used by spammers. See:

• https://fastmail.blog/2016/12/24/spf-dkim-dmarc/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMARC

Manual forwarding is not affected by DMARC, since the message From address would be your Fastmail address. But automatic forwarding can lead to the message arriving in the Spam folder or even being discarded. DMARC relies on:

• DKIM: This is an encrypted tag added to the full headers. It insures that the message was not altered in transit.
• SPF: Domain owners can specify which servers are allowed to send messages with From at that domain.
• Alignment: Domain owners can specify how strictly to apply rules which compare the From header, the envelope-From, and the encryption tags in the headers.
• DMARC policy: The domain owner can specify what to do if both DKIM and SPF fail the specified alignment.

In addition, the receiving email server can choose to follow, modify, or ignore the DMARC policy. So in some cases the message may be discarded with no warning, or placed in the Spam folder, or appear as normal in the Inbox with warnings.

So as you can see, it's dangerous to forward email automatically to a system which is using DMARC if the person who will read the message isn't familiar with these things. The whole purpose is so that if you get a message with a Gmail or AOL or Yahoo From address in the header, you know that the message was actually send directly to you by the proper server at those email providers and not a spoofer. Email forwarding can't be easily differentiated from criminal spoofing in most cases.

Bill

[xyzzy]

Originally Posted by Beebes

...and I will also follow another poster's suggestion that I use POP or IMAP to retrieve Fastmail email instead of forwarding it to my ISP.

Well certainly if they are appearing in your FM Inbox and you use an email client configured as POP or IMAP for your FM account then by definition they will appear in your client's inbox as well (unless your client filters too).

It's really not clear to me what you are actually trying to accomplish - the bottom line. Are you only trying to use FM simply as a source of aliases and a forwarding service while keeping your other email non-FM account as your master everyday account for the email? If so I think there are (free?) specialized services you can find that only do that (google search for them). An all-inclusive FM intercept rule looks like that to me (albeit you also get to keep a backup of the forwarded email).

Why not make FM your primary and access your non-FM email account from FM using FM's Import&Setup Connected Services Mail Fetch? Alternatively have your non-FM account forward all its incoming email to your FM account. An unconditional intercept like you are trying to do IMO defeats all the power of FM's filtering possibilities.

[Berenburger]

Originally Posted by xyzzy

It's really not clear to me what you are actually trying to accomplish - the bottom line. Are you only trying to use FM simply as a source of aliases and a forwarding service while keeping your other email non-FM account as your master everyday account for the email? If so I think there are (free?) specialized services you can find that only do that (google search for them). An all-inclusive FM intercept rule looks like that to me (albeit you also get to keep a backup of the forwarded email).

@Beebes Maybe Pobox (another Fastmail company) is a better service for you. It's specialized in forwarding.

[TenFour]

@Beebes Maybe Pobox (another Fastmail company) is a better service for you. It's specialized in forwarding.

What does Pobox.com do differently to make email forwarding work properly? I have used it in the past, and it does seem to work very reliably. The one big issue I see with mass forwarding of numerous email addresses or catch-all addresses is that inevitably you will be forwarding spam or phishing emails, though I suppose the Pobox.com filters are quite good. In my experience, their filters are almost too tight, catching a lot of legitimate emails. You have to monitor their spam catches almost daily, which becomes a chore if you get a lot of email.