Found a gotcha with gmail imap/pop support

by Mike Fullerton on November 8, 2007

If you use a non gmail address with gmail IMAP or POP email, watch out for the smtp server. It sends your mail from your gmail account only – it doesn’t honor the “from” header in your email. For example, I have everything setup to send mail from greentongue.com just fine but when sent through gmail’s smtp server, it shows up as from my gmail account. That’s bad. I don’t understand why the server would do this, since I already have to log in with my gmail account credentials.

So I guess I’ll use a different smtp server for now. Maybe I’ll log a bug with gmail or something.

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

MikeB November 8, 2007 at 10:14 am

I had noted this previously also; however I am not sure if this is a bug – or for Google, a ‘feature’. My guess is that Google do not want to be used as a mail server that people don’t log into. This is one way to ensure gmail is not forgotten. People reply regularly to gmail as well as the sending email address (unfortunately).

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