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Is it right to blame Google/Yahoo for deprecating an email forwarding service?

21 points by alumnisfu ↗ HN
My former university, Simon Fraser University, had a service for graduates where you could keep your old xxxxx@sfu.ca email address after graduation they would forward messages to an external email address.

I've been using this email address for 20 years now but they suddenly announced that they have to deprecate this service "to comply with industry-wide regulations" led by Google and Yahoo.

A FAQ was just posted (https://www.sfu.ca/information-systems/announcements-alerts/major-initiatives/Changes-to-SFU-email-forwarding-protocol.html) but it has very little information as to why this was necessary.

Is there a legitimate technical reason why the Google/Yahoo changes would make it impossible or difficult to continue offering mail forwarding?

19 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 53.0 ms ] thread
b20000
i think this has to do with DMARC. i received messages from mailgun and spotify about this stuff.

what enrages me as a small business owner is that this is another project i need to do. add DMARC to our domains. and next year it’s something new. companies like google can push their bullshit pipe dreams onto the world and get away with it.

mcsniff
Sorry, but this isn't brand new stuff.

As a small business owner, you should have had DMARC, SPF, and DKIM set up already to ensure your mail gets delivered properly.

danpalmer
This stuff was all “table stakes” when I ran my own email server about 8 years ago. It might not have been enforced 100% of the time, but absolutely impacts deliverability for senders of all sizes.
b20000
i have SPF and DKIM and i already have enough work
dataflow
Does setting up DMARC for the forwarding service address this? Or is forwarding literally impossible now?
geor9e
DMARC happened 9 years ago, so I don't see why that would be related. I attended two universities in the United States, and they are both still happily forwarding emails to me. They have both been using Google Workspace for the last decade or so. So, for what it's worth, it seems like it's just your school that is doing this. Perhaps their IT department just has particularly dumb leadership that is trying to cover their ass for something they don't understand. Or maybe they have budget cuts?
alumnisfu
Reading the FAQ and the emails they have sent, I get no indication that this is necessary, and it comes across like a convenient excuse to cut a service.
mixdup
Seems like a perfect opportunity to gin up some alumni donations

Become a dues paying member of the alumni society? Get a real mailbox at school.edu to keep your address

alumnisfu
In fairness to them, there isn't a way to keep your forwarding address even if you pay, or at least nothing advertised.
mixdup
Yes, I get that they are going to have to remove all forwarding--even for people who have mailboxes--due to the DMARC requirements

But at least by offering mailboxes to alumni those alumni would not lose access to that email address completely, which could be pretty bad if you've been relying on it for decades

alumnisfu
I'd pay ... even if just for a year so I can have more time to migrate everything.
dpifke
Gmail now requires mail forwarders to cryptographically attest to the original DMARC alignment of forwarded mail: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126?hl=en

Your former university may be using mail software that doesn't support ARC (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8617) or they've decided setting it up isn't worth it.

vinnrex
Thank you for putting me onto ARC. It seems that it was only finalized in 2019? Perhaps that might be why they might not be as informed of it. If one was to go about guiding the university on this, is there a place for me to start looking into this? From my current understanding, ARC signing requires an intermediary server? Is there a list of open source software that enables this?
uzername
The University of Minnesota Twin Cities offered Gmail to students when I attended '11-'15. They allowed alumni to keep the account and I respectfully used it, though infrequently, and kept my account active with reminders to log into it every 90 days. Late last year they claimed that Google was beginning to charge much more for accounts, and those alumni accounts were going to close.

This isn't the same as the forwarding service, but maybe the overhead wasn't worth it anymore.

vinnrex
Hello fellow SFU alumnus! This news has utterly disappointed me as well. I'm motivated enough about it to raise a stink. Feel free to DM me if you're down for an uphill battle.

I actually worked in IT Services a during my time at SFU and all I can say is that,the upper management were more career executives than people motivated by actually helping. As such, it came as no surprise that they took the easy way out.

alumnisfu
It's really frustrating. As I said, I've used the same address for 20+ years now and it seemed like good brand awareness for the university to maintain this service for graduates/professionals so I never thought I suddenly have to move away from it.

You can find my non-SFU (!) contact info in my profile.

vinnrex
I think you might need to update your "About" section. That's the only part that's visible to non-admins.