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Ask HN: How to get through to someone at Google about broken Gmail function?

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Re: Ask HN: How to get through to someone at Google about broken Gmail function?

#11
Same issue here.

Gmail offers this functionality in their own settings. There is no way to add SPF or DKIM records.

So if I use gmail to send using a third-party domain to a gmail address, it bounces.

I guess they forgot that people use the function.

Any hacks found in the meantime?

Re: Ask HN: How to get through to someone at Google about broken Gmail function?

#13
post #10

From the looks of it, this is not a problem that Google can fix, this is just how email works. In order to send email on behalf of a domain (the part after the '@' in the sender email address), the domain must authorize the sender to do so. This is done by publishing the sender's public DKIM key as a DNS record, and including the sender in the SPF policy. If you own the domain you are attempting to send from, then se…

Hey LeonM,

they apparently changed their security settings recently to reject unauthorised emails. This is new.

I can surely set a DKIM and SPF record for my domain, but I have no way of knowing what I should add as the settings, as Gmail isn't asking for it.

I'm not sure this is correct though: > The description that google gives is a bit misleading though:

> > "If you own another email address, you can send mail as that address."

You can actually send from any third party address, e.g. Yahoo etc. It's literally what their page says. You don't have to own the domain.

See https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370?hl=en-GB&sjid=2...

I know their previous set up wasn't super safe, but they could have mitigated for this instead of just breaking the feature.

Re: Ask HN: How to get through to someone at Google about broken Gmail function?

#14
post #3

Add an spf record to your domains.

This would be super easy to do, but how do I know what Gmail wants to see?

Update:

I just looked at another record and guessed what it wanted to see. I ended up with

"v=spf1 include:_[my_smtp_server] ~all"

and hey, it worked.

I appreciate this doesn't fix the Hotmail issue, but just wanted to share in case anyone else can use this.

Re: Ask HN: How to get through to someone at Google about broken Gmail function?

#15
post #10

From the looks of it, this is not a problem that Google can fix, this is just how email works. In order to send email on behalf of a domain (the part after the '@' in the sender email address), the domain must authorize the sender to do so. This is done by publishing the sender's public DKIM key as a DNS record, and including the sender in the SPF policy. If you own the domain you are attempting to send from, then se…

Hey LeonM, they apparently changed their security settings recently to reject unauthorised emails. This is new. I can surely set a DKIM and SPF record for my domain, but I have no way of knowing what I should add as the settings, as Gmail isn't asking for it. I'm not sure this is correct though: > The description that google gives is a bit misleading though: > > "If you own another email address, you can send mail as…

> You can actually send from any third party address, e.g. Yahoo etc. It's literally what their page says.

Any third party _service_, not necessarily any domain.

> You don't have to own the domain.

Nowhere on the page does Google claim that you don't have to own the domain.

If the domain is already using Google for email, this feature will 'just' work. If the domain does _not_ use Google for email already, then it probably won't work, but that depends on the SPF and DMARC settings of that domain. For it to work reliably, Google must be added to the SPF policy, and the DKIM record must be created. If you do not own that domain, then you can't do that.

> I know their previous set up wasn't super safe, but they could have mitigated for this instead of just breaking the feature.

No, they couldn't "mitigate" against this. As explained, this is how email works, there is nothing that Google can change about this. As more and more domains are adopting DMARC (which is good practice), the more this alias feature will break.

This is why I called it a documentation oversight by Google. They should be clear about that the domain must either already be using Gmail, or that you need administrative access to the domain to add Google to the SPF policy and add the DKIM record to the DNS zone.

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