Unified email addresses sent to gmail first?
regor3
Enthusiast - Level 2

I have used the issue "unified emai" addresses because I can't think of any other way to describe the problem.

Daughter in law gets an android system phone and the Verizon store staff help set her email up on the phone. She liked the idea of getting all her email on one screen on the phone so they set it up. She then has the new required gmail account and an old Charter email account. On her phone she sees all emails to both accounts in one folder. So far so good.

Now the weird part. She noticies no difference when she goes to her Charter eamil account on her home computer. She can read and respond to her Charter emails either on the computer or on her phone. But I send her an email if an attached .exe file to set up remote access to her computer. I get back a dameon notice that gmail has stripped the file from that email that was sent to her gmail account. But I didn't send it to her gmail address.... I sent it to her Charter email address. The email then does arrive at her Charter account missing the file. (Note:Gmail terms block .exe files from being recieved but Charter does not. I know because I sent the same file to another Charter address and it worked fine.) So why is gmail intercepting her Charter email and then appling gmails rules to it before realying it to her Charter account?

So the question is: What did the Verizon store staff do that has all Charter email sent to her go through the gmail server first before being relayed to Charter?

Second question is: Is that the only way a unified email folder will work (IE sending all emails first to gmail and then relaying the email to Charter's email server)?

I know other methods to get her the file. I am more interested in how and why the phone Android unnified email setup sends all Charter (and I assume other linked email addresses) first to gmail and then relays it to the other address.

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Re: Unified email addresses sent to gmail first?
tracker141
Enthusiast - Level 2

I would be interested to see what they did, how they set up these accounts. This is no different that if you use a email client on your computer and have it check email for a gmail, charter, ect account. Each account is set up different that the next. The only thing that I can think of is did they set the gmail account to check email of other accounts. Where as gmail is checking the Charter account. I am not sure why they would have done that other than one unified account to check. In that case the phone is not checking the email gmail is, which could lead to better battery life since most of the checking and downloading of email is being done on a backend server rather than the phone. When thinking about it like that kind of makes sense.

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Re: Unified email addresses sent to gmail first?
tracker141
Enthusiast - Level 2

To check this, if the user logs in to the gmail account from a web browser and not the phone. Go to settings a look for POP3/IMAP if the Charter account is in there that is what was done. As in gmail is checking the other account and downloading the email to the gmail account.

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Re: Unified email addresses sent to gmail first?
regor3
Enthusiast - Level 2

I will look at the settings in her gmail in a web browser. I assumed there was really only two way for one server to get emails from another.

1. Charter is set to foward all emails to Gmail and keep the email on Charter's serve too. (not what is happening here)

2. Gmail somehow reachs into Charter's server and downloads the mail to gmail. I suppose there would be options to leave the email on Charter's server. (But that doesn't explain why Charter's server doesn't keep the original email).

But instead what is happening here seems to be that gmail reachs into Charter server, hijacks the email and somehow deposits the hijacked mail back to Charter after it performs gmails rules.

Never having used the "unified" Andoid option (and I assume that was how it was done) I would have assumed the unified system would poll from mail from all accounts and put it into one box. But that doesn't seem to be happening here. But maybe they didn't do it from the phone but from the gmail web instead changing Charter's mail to gmail by taking the mail before Charter puts it on the server?

Here is what I want for her. Her phone would poll Charter and Gmail and put all emails in a common folder on the phone without Gmail modifiying the email sent to the Charter's address. Of course if the email was being put on the Gmail server then I would expect gmail to apply their own rules... but not to the email left on the Charter account.

Anyway I thank you for your response and will check her Gmail web setup.

BTW I'm in over my head here. 🙂

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