Email Forwarding
Suppose that you use another email account as your primary account and that you would like all your ECE email to be delivered there.
There are two ways to accomplish this:
- with directives in .forward files or
- with directives in .procmailrc files.
Please read How Received Email Is Processed to understand the difference between using .forward and .procmailrc.
Take care not to create a mail forwarding loop. If your other account is also configured to forward mail to your ECE account, the mail servers will keep forwarding messages to each other forever!
Staff and faculty considering forwarding email to a destination outside of UBC should be aware of policies set by University Counsel to ensure compliance with requirements laid out in FIPPA, the provincial Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Such forwarding is permitted only in very limited circumstances, and never to hosts located outside of Canada, such as gmail.
https://universitycounsel.ubc.ca/files/2012/11/Fact-Sheet-Privacy-of-Email-Syste ms.pdf
Using .forward To Forward Email
Create a plain text file in your home directory named .forward containing just the address(es) that you want to forward mail to. If there are multiple destinations, put them on separate lines. For example:
somebody@example.com
To keep a copy in your ECE account while also forwarding the mail, include a line with your username preceded by a backslash:
\myusername somebody@example.com
Using .procmailrc To Forward Email
Include the following rule in your .procmailrc file:
:0 ! somebody@example.com
