Solo Technology

I’m not sure where I saw this first… While I was taking a few days off for a quick family vacation quite a few folks mentioned an exciting new Gmail feature:

Now Gmail can check for the mail you receive at your other email accounts. You can retrieve your mail (new and old) from up to five other email accounts and have them all in Gmail.

[A bunch more info here]

I bet I’m not the only one toying with the notion of accessing my work email this way. And I bet I’m not the only IT guy living in fear that my office users are suddenly going to all be pulling their work email this way. Ah, the dichotomy of me!

Time to review the security and access policies at the office.

Work stuff aside, this is pretty awesome. I have a lot of email accounts that offer POP3 access, I could aggregate up to 5 of them into one Gmail account. I should also point out this has been possible with Yahoo! Mail for quite a few years and they also have the same limitation of 5 accounts. While I like the new Y! email beta interface, all the ads become rather off-putting and, frankly, Gmail’s anti-spam measures seem a lot more effective.

None of my Gmail accounts have this new feature activated yet, so I haven’t yet had a chance to play with it. Have you?

2 Responses to “Use Gmail to Pull Mail from Other Accounts”

1. Mila on December 11th, 2006 1:28 pm
   

   I’ve been forwarding email from an old account to Gmail for a while now, but wasn’t aware of this new capability. Being able to retrieve OLD email from other accounts definetly sets Gmail apart from other email providers who offer email forwarding.

   That said, you bring up a very important security concern. Controlling distribution of company (and client) information is a daunting task when it comes to email. There are, however, a few things IT specialists, can do to alleviate this issue. For example, an email anti-theft solution can help stop unintended distribution, which would prevent unauthorized parties from accessing confidential emails, no matter where they are forwarded. With new features like the “pull mail” capability becoming more prominent, it’ll be imperative for IT departments to start looking for preventative solutions.

2. Reah Guevarra - Google Maven on March 14th, 2008 4:05 am
   

   My comment is way too too late though, but I think last December 2007, a year after you wrote this post, I started using this feature. I let Gmail forward messages from 5 Gmail accounts to just one. I don’t usually use my other email clients, just Gmail because I love Google.

   So anyways, I wrote a post on how to do it, here is the link. Just in case some of your future visitors will be interested.

   http://www.thegooglemaven.com/get-email-from-other-gmail-accounts/

   Since I have been using it for a couple of months now, or maybe 3, I can say the feature was really helpful. Less time. I only check one Gmail account.

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