Identities: who you are as a sender

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Sending from a different address in webmail 1:07

Module 4: You as the sender · Reading time: 11 minutes

Learning objective: After this lesson you can set up an identity so recipients see at once who is mailing, you know what each field does in the headers, and you understand why you can only send from certain addresses.

Key concepts: identity, display name, From, Organization, Reply-To, Bcc copy, default identity, sender check, forwarder, SPF, DMARC

What the recipient sees of you

When Ahmed gets an email from Emma, he first sees one thing in his message list: the sender's name. That name comes from the From header, which has two parts:

From: Emma Smith | Example Flower Studio <emma@example.com>

The part between the angle brackets is the address. The part before it is the display name. Most mail programs show only the display name in the list. If it is missing, you see only the address, or only the part before the @. An email from "info" tells nobody anything. An email from "Emma Smith | Example Flower Studio" does.

In the webmail, this combination of name, address and a few extra settings is an identity. You have at least one: the one for the address you log in with. You can create more, for example for a second address (lesson 4.3).

A good display name:

is your own name, the name of your organisation, or a combination: "Emma Smith | Example Flower Studio" or "Example Flower Studio";
is not an email address. A display name like "emma@example.com" looks suspicious, because that is exactly what scammers do: show an address as the name that does not match the real address;
is recognisable to the recipient. If you email customers, they often recognise the shop sooner than your first name.

Remember from lesson 2.2: anyone can fill in any display name. That is why the name says nothing about whether a message is genuine. But for your own mail, it is the first thing that counts.

Settings, Identities with the Display Name, Email and Organization fields — (1) Display Name, (2) Email, (3) Organization

The other fields of an identity

An identity has more fields than a name and an address. Each field becomes a header in your message or does something when you send.

Organization becomes the Organization header. Some programs show it next to the sender. Handy if your display name is just your own name. It is optional.
Reply-To becomes the Reply-To header (lesson 3.1). If you enter info@example.com here, every reply to mail from this identity goes to info@. Usually you leave this empty: replies should come back to whoever wrote. A fixed Reply-To you have forgotten about is a classic cause of "I never got a reply".
Bcc also sends every message you send as a hidden copy to a fixed address. For example, so a colleague sees all quotes. The recipients do not see that address. Do think it through: does that colleague know they get everything, and is it necessary?
Set default decides which identity the webmail picks when you start a new message. When you reply, the webmail usually picks the identity of the address the email came in on.
Signature is your signature (lesson 4.2).

Sender check: why you cannot fill in just anything

In principle you can type any address under Email in an identity. Even so, the server refuses a message if you send from an address that does not belong to you. This is called the sender check. Without it, anyone who logs in to a mailbox on the same server could send mail in someone else's name: the neighbour on the server, or an intruder in one stolen mailbox who then sends phishing in the name of the whole organisation.

At WebOké you can send from:

the address you are logged in with;
an address that forwards to your mailbox, a forwarder, on the same server.

Does Emma, logged in as emma@example.com, also want to be able to send as orders@example.com? Then she makes orders@ a forwarder to emma@ and creates an extra identity with that address. Without a forwarder she gets a message like "Account ... can not send emails from ...". Other providers use similar rules, though under different names (for example "send as" or "send on behalf of").

Why not a Gmail address through another server

A common question: "Can I create an identity with my Gmail address in the webmail?" The answer is no, and that is not just a WebOké rule. The domain gmail.com belongs to Google. Google publishes in the DNS which servers may send mail for that domain (SPF), signs its own mail (DKIM), and asks recipients to reject mail that does not match or put it in spam (DMARC). An email with a Gmail address in From that comes from another server does not match those rules. At best it lands in spam, at worst it never arrives. The same goes for any other domain with a strict DMARC policy, including your own domain if you have set it up properly. The course Email in order explains SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

If you want to send mail from an address belonging to another provider, do it through that provider itself.

Example: three identities in one mailbox

Emma logs in with emma@example.com. She has three identities:

Emma Smith | Example Flower Studio with emma@example.com: the default, for personal mail with customers.
Example Flower Studio with orders@example.com: for order confirmations. orders@ is a forwarder to emma@.
Example Flower Studio with info@example.com: for general questions. info@ is also a forwarder to emma@.

For the orders@ identity she has left Reply-To empty, so customers simply reply to orders@ and those replies reach her through the forwarder. She has filled in Organization everywhere with "Example Flower Studio".

If you look at the headers of an email from the second identity, you see:

From: Example Flower Studio <orders@example.com>
Organization: Example Flower Studio

There is no Bcc header in the message Ahmed receives, not even if Emma has set up a Bcc copy. That copy travels only via the envelope.

Pitfalls

Only an address, no name. Your mail shows up in the list as "info" or "emma". Less recognisable, and sometimes more likely to end up in spam.
A display name that looks like an address. Spam filters and alert recipients distrust that.
A forgotten Reply-To. Replies go to an address nobody checks.
An identity for an address without a forwarder. Sending fails with a message about the address.
The wrong identity on a new message. Check From before you send, especially if you have several identities.

In practice: how it works in the webmail

You manage identities under Settings > Identities. Click your address to fill in Display Name, Organization, Reply-To, Bcc and Signature, or click Create for an extra identity. When writing, you choose which identity to use under From. You create the forwarder in your hosting control panel (at WebOké, DirectAdmin). The Roundcube manual describes the steps. Other webmail works in a similar way; in Gmail, for example, it is called "Send mail as".

Summary

The display name is what recipients see in their list: make it recognisable and not an email address.
Organization becomes the Organization header, Reply-To becomes the Reply-To header; usually leave Reply-To empty.
A Bcc in your identity sends every message unseen to a fixed address.
The server only lets you send from your own address or a forwarder to your mailbox on the same server.
You cannot use an address from another provider (such as Gmail) through your own server: SPF and DMARC make that fail.

Quiz

Exercise

Exercise A4.1: Getting your sender checked. Set up your identity under Settings > Identities: a clear Display Name and, if you like, Organization. Then send an email to yourself with WMC A4.1 in the subject. Open the email you received, choose More > Export (you get an .eml file) and upload that file. The program reads the file only in memory and stores nothing. It checks: the subject contains A4.1; From has a display name that is not an email address and is not the same as the part before the @; the domain in From is not an example domain such as example.com; there is no visible Bcc header in the message; Organization is filled in (advice, orange if it is empty); and it shows what is in Reply-To (for information, so you can see whether you have forgotten a Reply-To). For each line you get green, orange or red with an explanation.

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