Gmail Tampers with Outgoing Email

lee-phillips.org

9 pointsleephillips6 comments

My summary: user is authenticating to Google's authenticated smtp server as one user but sending as a completely unrelated user. Google modifies the headers to reference the authenticated sender.

Frankly I'm not surprised. I think that the fact that is not a relay server but a specifically provided for the use of the MUA of a user with which they have a relationship gives themselves a lot of 'wiggle room' .

The use of 'tamper' in the heading is a little over the top too.

AFAIR, registering your other email addresses with gmail ("Send as") works fine to prevent this behavior.

That is not the case here; that is specifically addressed in the article.

Where? I didn't read anything about him Pre-clearing the address with GMail as a verified email...

Apologies, I misread your comment. I thought you were referring to the second paragraph ending in

"...Google makes this straightforward to set up"

Do you have a link for the pre-clearing?

Anyway, while I'm here, I'd take issue with

"and their correspondents will never know they are using gmail"

They can easily find out if they inspect the headers.

I use gmail exactly as he describes, with gnus as my client. All the addresses registered with gmail are unaffected when sending via SMTP.

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