On Sun, 17 Aug 2025, Karen Lewellen via Alpine-info wrote:
I have a gmail address set to forward to another email I can actually
reach.
For reasons most likely different from yours, I have a similar
arrangement, i.e. my work Gsuite ("enterprise" gmail) mail is forwarded to
another provider, from where it is fetched via fetchmail and accessed
locally by alpine.
Recently though some important emails have fallen prey to google's
filtering system.
Please define "fallen prey". With respect to our earlier arrangement
before gmail (mail handled locally with institution-customized
spamassassin) it appears that we have more false positives and negatives,
and also a different pattern of received spam.
As far as I can see for a mail coming into a gmail address which is
forwarded to a third party address one can have:
1) message is DISCARDED silently when entering gmail (if this happens,
one can not tell, but if it does it should be for true spam)
2) message is delivered in gmail Spam folder (true spam or false
positives)
3) message is delivered in gmail inbox and forwarded to the third
party, and a coipy is stored in gmail Bin
4) message received from third party delivered in its spam folder
5) message delivered in third party inbox
Personally I get cases 5 and also rare 4 automatically via fetchmail every
5 minutes, and my alpine sees them as local mail.
Instead once a day I access case 2 via alpine and Save the occasional
false positive to my local INBOX. I leave real spam there hoping "it
learns". Also once per day I access case 3 Bin and delete-and-expunge its
entire content.
Both fetchmail an alpine access gmail via an app password.
I am wondering if alpine itself has a process for whitelisting
addresses?
Maybe, I do not know, as I impkememnt whitelisting at fetchmi/promcail
level i.e. before alpine.
But I doubt you could whitelist addresses in stages 1/2 BEFORE alpine
enters in the track.
If your case is stage 2 (false positive), you can define a folder
collection in alpine for all gmail folders except its inbox via
M S L defing as collection with
Server : imap.gmail.com:993/ssl/notls/user=whatever
Path : [Gmail]/
For reasons unclear to me that views all gmail folders (I have only the
standard ones, and only Spam and Bin aere populated)
To access gmail inbox I define in M S C in the Incoming Folders a folder
Gsuite {imap.gmail.com:993/ssl/novalidate-cert/notls/user=whatever}
De facto in my current arrangement such inbix empties almost
instantaneously (except that all stuff is copied to gmail Bin)
I have also similar arrangements (a folder collection, and an incoming
folder inbox) also for my third party. In principle I could use such
incoming folder to check mail "in transit" during the 5 min before it is
fetched (I do that for form-authorization messages). For me the third
party folder collectio is always empty because fetchmail gets both the inbox
and spam (stages 4/5 above i.e. occasional few false positives)
So one can do everything (manually) within alpine (but stage 1 assumed it
exists). The only "disadvantage" is that an L command within alpine needs
to access all folder collections, so needs all the passwords (app password
for gmail), but they can be saved via the master password mechanism in
alpine).
Hope this helps somehow
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Corti 12 - I-20133 Milano (Italy)
For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Se si maneggiassero di più i libri che le armi, non si vedrebbero tante
stragi, tanti misfatti e tante brutture" (Aldo Manuzio, ca. 1506)
"If people would handle more books than weapons, we would not see so msny
carnages, misdeeds, and awful things." (Aldus Manutius, ca. 1506)
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