GMail makes itself disappear

 

Gallery

By Barry Collins

Posted on 31 Jul 2009 at 14:18

GMail has introduced a new feature that allows you to send and receive email from another address, without your correspondents being any the wiser.

GMail has long been able to send and receive email from other POP3/IMAP accounts, such as those provided by ISPs.

However, email sent from GMail has carried the rather awkward "From username@gmail.com On Behalf Of customaddress@mydomain.com" in the From field.

Google's now giving users the option to drop the "on behalf of", so that email appears as if it's coming straight from the alternative address.

To do this, GMail sends messages via your ISP's outbound SMTP server instead of its own.

The company admits the solution won't work for everyone. "We recognise that your other address might not have a server that you can use to send outbound messages - for example, if you use a forwarding alias rather than an actual mailbox, or if your other email provider doesn't support authenticated SMTP, or restricts access to specific IP ranges," GMail software engineer, Emmanuel Pellereau, writes on the Official GMail blog. "For this reason, we've kept the original method as well."

Users who want to take advantage of the new feature should go to Settings | Accounts | and select the Edit info link next to their alias address,