Instituto Superior Técnico

Serviços de Informática

Alert regarding e-mail redirects

The configuration of automatic email redirect filters to a different account is not recommended because it is likely to result in loss of emails.

This configuration is usually done using filters available in the webmail service. While useful, it entails serious risks. The redirected email keeps the original sender address but will be received in its destination as coming from the Técnico mail servers. Should the destination server be configured to strictly verify the origin of the email, it may reject or even discard these emails when they originally came from outside the Técnico domain. This may happen due to, for example, SPFor DMARCverifications.

For this reason we recommend to our users to not configure a global redirect of all email to an external account. We advise to at least keep a local copy of the received email in the Técnico account mailbox. If you use the webmail system, the filter “Send message copy to” is advised over the more dangerous “Redirect message to”.