Module 4 · 4.1

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Identities: who you are as a sender

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 emailing, 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 Sanne, the first thing he sees in his message list is the sender's name. That name comes from the From header, which has two parts:

From: Sanne de Vries | Bloemenatelier Example <sanne@example.com>

The part between the angle brackets is the address. The part before it is the display name. Most email programs only show the display name in the list. If it's missing, you only see the address, or just the part before the @. An email from "info" tells nobody anything. An email from "Sanne de Vries | Bloemenatelier Example" does.

In webmail, this combination of name, address and a few extra settings is called 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: "Sanne de Vries | Bloemenatelier Example" or "Bloemenatelier Example";
is not an email address. A display name like "sanne@example.com" looks suspicious, because that is exactly what scammers do: show an address as the name that doesn't 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. So the name says nothing about whether an email is genuine. But for your own email, it's 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's optional.
Reply-To becomes the Reply-To header (lesson 3.1). If you enter info@example.com here, every reply to email from this identity goes to info@. Usually you leave this empty: replies should come back to whoever wrote. A fixed Reply-To you've forgotten about is a classic cause of "I never got a reply".
Bcc sends every message you send as a hidden copy to a fixed address too. For example, so a colleague sees all quotes. Recipients don't 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 arrived at.
Signature is your email signature (lesson 4.2).

Sender check: why you can't fill in just anything

In the Email field of an identity you can, in principle, type any address. Still, the server refuses a message if you send from an address that isn't yours. This is called a sender check. Without it, anyone who logs in to a mailbox on the same server could send email 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're logged in with;
an address that redirects to your mailbox, a forwarder, on the same server.

Does Sanne, logged in as sanne@example.com, also want to email as bestellingen@example.com? Then she makes bestellingen@ a forwarder to sanne@ 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, although they call them something else (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 in webmail with my Gmail address?" The answer is no, and that's not just a WebOké rule. The domain gmail.com belongs to Google. Google publishes in the DNS which servers may send email for that domain (SPF), signs its own email (DKIM), and asks recipients to reject email that doesn't match or put it in spam (DMARC). An email with a Gmail address in From that comes from another server doesn't match those rules. At best it ends up in spam, at worst it doesn't arrive at all. The same goes for any other domain with a strict DMARC policy, including your own domain if you've set it up properly. The course Email in order explains SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

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

Example: three identities in one mailbox

Sanne logs in with sanne@example.com. She has three identities:

Sanne de Vries | Bloemenatelier Example with sanne@example.com: the default, for personal email with customers.
Bloemenatelier Example with bestellingen@example.com: for order confirmations. bestellingen@ (orders) is a forwarder to sanne@.
Bloemenatelier Example with info@example.com: for general questions. info@ is also a forwarder to sanne@.

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

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

From: Bloemenatelier Example <bestellingen@example.com>
Organization: Bloemenatelier Example

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

Pitfalls

Just an address, no name. Your email shows up in the list as "info" or "sanne". Less recognisable, and sometimes more likely to land 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 under From which identity you use. You create the forwarder in your hosting control panel (at WebOké that's DirectAdmin). The Roundcube manual describes the steps. Other webmail works in a similar way; in Gmail, for example, it's 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 Reply-To; 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 can't use an address from another party (such as Gmail) through your own server: SPF and DMARC make that fail.

Quiz

Exercise

Exercise A4.1: Having your sender checked. Under Settings > Identities, set up your identity: 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 only reads the file 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's empty); and it shows what's in Reply-To (for information, so you can see whether you've forgotten a Reply-To). For each line you get green, orange or red with an explanation.

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