There is a feature commonly called Identities or Roles that allows you to send email so it comes from an address other than your default email address. This is most commonly used for the following reasons:

• So you can send email to a mailing list when you are subscribed using an address other than your default address. For example, you may be subscribed to a mailing list as user@indiana.edu but the default for your outgoing email is user@umail.iu.edu. Your postings to the list may be rejected because you are seen as not being a member of the list.

• To send email so it appears to be from a group account or mailing list address. For example, you may be a member of a school-wide committee and want to send email so it appears to be from the committee instead of from you individually. You can also control the destination address for replies so anyone replying to the email will reach the committee instead of just you.

It is important to note that this does not let you send email truly anonymously. The email may not include your normal email address but it will contain header information identifying the system used to send the email and other tracking data that could be used to identify you as the sender. Like just about everything you do on the internet, your activity could still be tracked back to you.

You are also advised to send a test message to yourself and look at the full headers of the message for identifying information if you need to ensure that your normal email address is not exposed. Different mailers expose different information when using identities so you should take care that you are not exposing more information than you want.

Most modern mail clients have support for Identites or alternate Accounts but how these are managed is mailer-specific. Below is information on how to use this feature using Mozilla Thunderbird, Squirrelmail/CS Webmail, Gmail (including umail.iu.edu), Pine, IU Webmail, and Outlook.

Mozilla Thunderbird

There are the steps for adding a new "Identity" in Mozilla Thunderbird:

1. Select "Account Settings..." which will be under either the "Edit" or "Tools" menu depending on the version of Thunderbird you are using.

2. From the "Account Settings" page, click on the "Manage Identies..." button which you should find under the general account settings (ie. under the section where you set your name and email address).

3. From the Manage Identities window you should see a listing of your existing email addresses. Click on "Add..." to create a new Identity.

4. From the Identity Settings window, you will want to fill in the following fields:
   • Your Name - The name you want to appear in the outgoing email. For example, you could use something like "School of Informatics and Computing Facilities Committee".

   • Email Address - The email address you want the email to appear to be from. If there is a mailing address for the members of the committee, you can use that.

   • Reply-to Address - You will probably want to use the same email address that you used in the Email Address field. If you don't enter an address here, the email will appears to be from your committee but replies will come back to you.

   There are other settings you can configure, but the above are the required ones.

5. When you are done, just click OK to save this Identity.

Once you have the identity configured, using it is quite simple. When you compose a message like you normally would, you can select this new identity from the pull-down menu in the From: field while you are in the Compose editor.

Squirrelmail/CS Webmail

The SoIC/CS webmail server (webmail.soic.indiana.edu) uses Squirrelmail and you can manage your Identities as follows:

1. Log into the webmail server and click on "Options"

2. From the Options page, click on "Personal Information"

3. From the Personal Information page, click on "Edit Advanced Identities"

4. In the "Add a New Identity" section (NOT the default identity) fill in the following:

   • Full Name - The name you want to appear in the outgoing email. For example, you could use something like "School of Informatics and Computing Facilities Committee".

   • E-Mail Address - The email address you want the email to appear to be from. If there is a mailing address for the members of the committee, you can use that.

   • Reply to - You will probably want to use the same email address that you used in the Email Address field. If you don't enter an address here, the email will appears to be from your committee but replies will come back to you.

5. Click "Save/Update" to save your new identity.

Once you have the identity configured, using it is quite simple. When you compose a message like you normally would, you can select this new identity from the pull-down menu in the From: field while you are in the Compose editor.

Gmail (including umail.iu.edu)

This feature can be configured in Gmail as follows:

1. Log into gmail (or umail) and click on "Options> Mail Settings". Options is the little gear in the upper right corner to the right of your name.

2. From the Setting page, click on "Accounts and Import"

3. In the "Send mail as" section, click on "Send mail from another address"

4. Fill in the Name and Email address and click "Next Step".

5. It should work to just use the gmail server for sending, so just select "Send through Gmail" and click "Next Step"

6. Click "Send Verification". This will send a verification email to this address. Once you receive that email, just click on the verification link to confirm that you actually own the email address you are using.

Once you have the identity configured, using it is quite simple. When you compose a message like you normally would, you can select this new identity from the pull-down menu in the From: field while you are in the Compose editor. You can also make this address the default by selecting 'make default' from the Send mail as: settings page.

If you have a umail.iu.edu email address and are setting this up so you can post to listservs where you are subscribed using your @indiana.edu address, then we recommend that you set up an @indiana.edu identity and use that as your default identity so all email you send goes out using your @indiana.edu address.

It is important to note that when using this feature in gmail, the outgoing messages will still contain a 'Sender' header that includes your real gmail/umail email address. So, you should NOT use this if exposing your real email address is not acceptable.

Pine

You can configure multiple Roles (the term for identies in pine) from within pine and then send email as any of these roles. Here is the process for setting this up in pine.

1. There are a couple settings you will probably want to set in your pine configuration related to roles. Go into S-Setup, C-Configure and enable the following:

   Sending Preferences -> Do Not Generate Sender Header
   Advanced User Preferences -> Confirm Role Even for Default

   Once you Set (X) these options, hit E-Exit, Y-Yes to save the changes.
   
   
2. You are now ready to create your new role, which you can do by going to S-Setup, R-Rules, R-Roles, A-Add. From here you can C-Change the desired values. At a minumim, you should change the 'Nickname' to some name you want to use for this role and set the 'From pattern' to the email address you want to send from. Once that is done, hit E-Exit, Y-Yes, E-Exit, Y-Yes.

After you have all the desired roles configured, when you C-Compose it will prompt you with:

Press Return to Compose using no role, or ^T to select a role

If you just hit return, it will send normally. If you hit ^T (ctrl-T) it will allow you to select the desired role.

If you set the "Do Not Generate Sender Header" option as shown above, your email address on the local system will not be exposed in the email you send using an alternate role. If you don't set this option, your email address will appear in a Sender header unless you specifically set the 'Sender pattern' in the configuration for the role. However, no matter how you configure things, the IP address and hostname of the system you are using will be included in the Received: headers of the outgoing message.

IU Webmail

When using the IU webmail server (webmail.iu.edu) you can manage your Identities per the UITS KB page

The procedure for setting this up in very similar as with the CS Webmail Server but there is one notable difference. The IU Webmail server restricts your ability to change the "From Address". So, the email you send using this identity will have a From: address that has the name you select but will include your email address instead of, for example, your mailing list address. However, you can set the reply-to address to be the mailing list address so anyone replying to the email will still be sending to the correct mailing list address. This is an annoyance but might not be a show-stopper since the From name that most mailers will display will still be the name you select. But, it is simple to see the email address of the real sender. If this is not acceptable, then you should use an alternate method, like Thunderbird

Outlook

TBD

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