Auto forward unreliable

[Help-me-rhonda]

I have been using the auto forward function to pass e-mails from my TalkTalk mailbox to a Gmail account for years.  It has never been completely reliable, but in recent months it seems to be dropping more e-mails than ever.  So much so that I have now changed the rule to not delete forwarded messages, otherwise they disappear and are unrecoverable.  Is there a way to fix auto forward, or is there another way to ensure all the e-mails get to my Gmail inbox using a different method?

[Gondola]

Hey, Help-me-rhonda 

That's brilliant. Thank you for your guidance for other members to follow. Nice one.

Feel free to offer more advice anytime.

[Help-me-rhonda]

For anyone else feeling frustrated with this issue, I describe below how to set Gmail to collect mail directly from TalkTalk rather than using the unreliable Auto Forward from TalkTalk.  These instructions are for desktop.  I couldn't immediately see how to do it on mobile, but I imagine it's a similar process once you find the right settings menu.

1. First, open your Gmail inbox from your browser and log in if needed.
2. Next to your profile icon in the top right corner, nestled between the question mark and the waffle, click the gear icon to open settings.
3. Right at the top of the panel is a button to "See all settings" - click that to get to the detailed settings you'll need.
4. Click onto the Accounts and Import tab at the top to get to the area you need.
   
   I'll talk you through getting Gmail to pull messages from TalkTalk first.  I already had it set to be a sender as well, so I'll add that detail later.
   
   
5. Scroll down to the section called Check mail from other accounts and click Add an email account.
6. In the new window that pops up, enter your TalkTalk e-mail address and click Next >>.
7. The wizard will tell you that it can't work magic with TalkTalk and you'll have to configure it manually, but that's okay.  Click the only available radio button and click Next >>.
8. Here's where you need your TalkTalk login info.  The Username is your TalkTalk e-mail address and the Password is the one you would use to log in to TT Webmail.  The POP server is mail.talktalk.net and you'll need to change the Port to 995 for it to work correctly.  You'll want to tick the box to always use SSL for security.  I also ticked the box to leave messages on the server, as I'm not ready to trust the whole setup just yet!  Once you're happy with the settings, click forward and it will do an authentication test.  Assuming you got your password right, that should be it!
   
   Mine sat at "Checking for new messages..." for ages and wouldn't let me leave the settings menu until it was complete.  After about an hour, it had synchronised about 3,000 messages and then gave me an error, so I had to refresh the page.  Fortunately it did remember the settings, but it forgot about the new messages and started synchronising again.  This time it worked, so I'll chalk it up to an expired session or something.  If you have fewer messages in your TalkTalk mailbox, I expect this will be fairly quick and error-free for you.
   
   Now, if you also want to be able to send messages from Gmail so that they appear to come from TalkTalk, keep reading.
   
   
9. Back in the Gmail settings page, still on the Accounts and Import tab, look at the next section up, called Send mail as: and click Add another email address
10. This opens a new wizard window again, so go ahead and fill in the Name as you wish it to appear to recipients (usually your actual name) and your TT address in the Email address box.  You'll also want to untick the Treat as an alias box, as this isn't the way we want to set it up, and then click Next Step >>.
11. This time, the SMTP Server address is smtp.talktalk.net and the Port you want to use is 587.  The Username is your TT e-mail address and the Password is the same as before, i.e. your TT webmail login.  Finally, ensure the TLS radio button is selected and save your changes.  It will do another quick authentication check and then you'll be done.
12. Close the settings and return to your inbox simply by clicking on your Inbox in the left hand panel.

Now, when you reply to an e-mail which Gmail has pulled from your TT mailbox, it will automagically set the sender address as your TT address.  You can change it by clicking on the recipient address at the top of the compose pane.  Then click on the sender address and pick the one you want to send from.

Similarly, when you come to draught a new e-mail, Gmail will default to the address of the account you're signed in with - i.e. your Gmail address.  You can change it to your TT address in the same way as above.  It also works in exactly the same way from the Android Gmail app, so you can handle all of your messages from there and nobody will know you're using Gmail.

[Help-me-rhonda]

It's okay, I found it.  Looking at my previous posts, I disabled it a few years ago because I was getting intermittent authentication errors from TalkTalk.  I have re-enabled it and it appears to be working.  I'm just waiting for it to finish synchronising before adding the write-up in here for how I switched it back on, as this may well help others with the same issue.

[Gondola]

Auto forwarded mail from TalkTalk will break the originators strict authentication protocol so it's then up to Gmail how to handle the mail. It may choose to drop the mail into a spam folder, defer or delay its delivery or drop it altogether. 

Do you have Gmail on the desktop app or the mobile app? You can add TalkTalk Mail to either but the set up is different.

[Help-me-rhonda]

Thanks for your response @Gondola - also apologies for my delayed reply, the notification ironically went to spam!  Unfortunately, I'm not sure it answers my query though.  If the messages were all going to spam, I'd be okay with that, as I can teach Google to put them somewhere else, but they're not reaching the Google mailbox at all.  I don't entirely understand the acronyms you've used, but why would they vary?  Presumably, if a server is using the right protocols, etc. it will either always use them or never use them (and, by extension, I would either always receive the forwarded messages or never receive them).  But that's not the behaviour I experience.  I can be having an e-mail conversation with someone, then miss a couple of messages from them, and then start receiving them again.  That's why I said it's unreliable, as I can't guarantee that messages will get through, but it isn't completely broken because some of them do find their way to my Google box.

You said it's best to collect the messages from the TalkTalk mailbox rather than use autoforward.  Do you know how I can achieve this with Gmail?  I'm sure I set Gmail to be a mail client for TalkTalk many years ago, but wouldn't know whether that's still in place, how to find it, or how to set that back up again if it's no longer configured (or why it would no longer be configured - i.e. was that also unreliable?)

[Gondola]

Auto forwarding is never to be considered reliable. 

For mail to be accepted by most recipient mail servers that mail must be fully authenticated by the originating mail server. The originating mail server uses SPF, DKIM and DMARC that are the authenticating protocols. However, if the originating mail server sets an authentication policy of permitting only its defined servers to send mail then the auto forwarding by TalkTalk will break that authentication.

Therefore it's recommended to collect all mail messages from the TalkTalk mailbox.

The other issue currently is that Gmail has a new policy of insisting on SPF, DKIM and DMARC and that the sending server has an extremely low spam sending rate. Any mail that's non compliant with Gmail's new policy is at risk of Gmail dumping that mail into Spam folders regardless of whether it's spam or genuine.