Emails bounce for a user that has her out of domain forwarding enabled

[CarrieH]

I have a user which I did have issues getting her name/email address set up correctly, but once she was able to authenticate to her account, when I try to email her from outside of our Google Domain (we have another domain that we haven't migrated from Microsoft 365 to Google yet), her emails bounce back as undeliverable that she's not found at xxx.com domain.

she did mention to me that she enabled the "out of domain email forwarding to another email address that's outside of our domain". Note: I am going to need to have a talk with her about forwarding emails outside of our domain to put us at risk and since it's to her own business email address (big no-no if you're a board member of a nonprofit).

My question, would this cause her emails to bounce back? 

I'm new to Google Workspace and I'm trying to troubleshoot this issue, any help would be appreciated.

update: this seems to only happen with this user only, I can only assume it's because she has that domain forwarding 😕

Thanks

Carrie

[KAM]

@CarrieH As you mentioned, forwarding emails could be very problematic.  Different retention policies. different privacy, different security settings, etc.

However, once you've dealt with that, let's say that you are going to allow said user to consolidate their email, you've really got to allow a pull NOT a push.

When you push email, aka forwarding, your org looks like the sender.  Email could then bounce for many reasons such as if they look spamming, if you've broken DKIM, if the volume is too much, etc.  You can also end up on blocklists because of forwarding too.

The real answer is to use POP3 and fetch the mail.  Here's how you would do this from a Workspace/Gmail account https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7104828?hl=en

HTH -KAM

[christiannewman]

@KAM nailed it - autoforwarding will break email authentication based on the original sender's policies. Moreover, allowing users to forward their emails exfiltrates your company's private communications to a third party, and should not be allowed. Here's how to disable forwarding.

[CarrieH]

Thanks to @KAM and @christiannewman, so it appears this is why emails are bouncing, it's because she's forwarding them to her business email.

How can I as an admin create a policy so that no one in our organization can do this as a "push"?

(Today's is this person's birthday, so I'll do this tomorrow)

Thanks

Carrie

[christiannewman · Accepted solution]

Follow the instructions in the support article (but to disable, not enable): https://support.google.com/a/answer/14724207?hl=en

[CarrieH]

Thanks, I've sent her email (to be delivered tomorrow, day after her birthday) explaining why we can't automate forwarding of emails outside of our domain.