forwardemail/forwardemail.net

catch-all vs catch-leftovers

mlsad3 opened this issue · 6 comments

mlsad3 commented

Right now there are a lot of Google G Suite (Legacy) users that are needing to switch things around. Their situation (at least mine) is:

  • Several explicitly defined users (userB@custom.com, userB@custom.com, userC@custom.com) for other family members, each user has their own gmail account
  • Catch-all for the hundreds of random aliases (storeA@custom.com, bankB@custom.com) created over 15 years that all just get caught and go to a single gmail account (userC@custom.com)

It does not seem like this can be handled currently by forwardemail.net. With the given rules:

But based on the FAQ and a discussion with customer support, Everything (including all of userA and userB's personal emails) will get sent to userC@gmail.com.

Can we add a "if nothing else matches" rule (catch-leftovers)?

forward-email=?:userC@gmail.com  # Catch-leftovers, if all other rules do not match
mlsad3 commented

A workaround I think could work is to register two domains (custom2.com and custom.com).

custom.com Rules:

forward-email=userA:userA@gmail.com
forward-email=userB:userB@gmail.com
forward-email=userC:userC@gmail.com
forward-email=custom2.com  # Just forward emails to new domain

custom2.com Rules:

forward-email=!userA   # Block userA emails
forward-email=!userB   # Block userB emails
forward-email=userC@gmail.com  # Hopefully catch-all does not catch userA/userB

But this doesn't seem as elegant as having "catch-leftovers" natively supported (not sure how many people would want to register a second domain to just do this)

AND the catch-all might still forward userA and userB's emails even in this scenario.

Slugger commented

Are you sure this is how it's working for you? I'm a Gsuite Legacy convert and things are working for me how you want them to work. That is, I (userC) am the catch all address for the domain and I'm definitely not ever receiving emails to userA, userB, etc. family members. Those messages are going direct to their private gmail boxes. I do receive the aliases (and the made up addresses by spammers) delivered to me, but I never receive emails addressed userA, userB, etc. Incoming mail looks for a matching alias first then if nothing matches, is delivered to the catchall, if defined.

  • 🚀1
mlsad3 commented

Okay thanks @Slugger for the confirmation. I never signed up for forwardemail, since when I asked customer support regarding this, they said otherwise. But if it works for you, then I'm sure it will work for me. Thanks!

titanism commented

Sorry for the confusion in the past!

To clarify, global forwarding catch-alls are only used if there are NO other matches found.

titanism commented

We deleted the previous comment - the paid plans do in fact match free plans currently in this concept as mentioned in the comment above today.

schultzter commented

This is a great explanation, it should be added to the FAQ