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Blocking of Auto-forwarding emails from Glow

Important information: Glow users will no longer be able to auto forward emails from Outlook within Glow to external recipients outside of Glow.

Background #

Previously within Glow, users had the ability to enable auto-forwarding via the methods below:

Enable auto-forwarding for all Glow emails from the settings within Outlook
Setting up Glow email rules for auto-forwarding specific emails
Setting up an auto-forwarding rule when enabling an out of office for Glow email

What’s changed? #

Glow users still have the ability to set up auto-forwarding rules, but these will be blocked for email addresses outside of Glow, and will no longer work.

When Outlook receives a command to auto-forward an email from Glow to an email address outside of Glow, users will receive an error message in their Glow inbox.

A screenshot of the error message can be seen on the right.

Error message from blocking auto forwarding

What kind of auto-forwarding still works within Glow? #

The following scenarios will still work within Glow:

Manual forwarding Glow emails internally within Glow
Manually forwarding Glow emails to external email addresses
Auto-forwarding rules to internal Glow email addresses

What’s the rational behind this change? #

Forwarding of emails can be used by attackers to compromise accounts in other systems, removing the ability to forward emails would not only prevent this mode of attack but also limit the spread of phishing and malware out with the platform, making it easier to manage the removal of phishing and malware from mailboxes.

Image of someone trying to hack into a laptop

Are there any alternative options? #

Some local authorities allow Glow users to set up their Glow email address as a second profile within their corporate Outlook app, which allows users the ability to switch between the two email accounts quickly and easily.

Please note, this will depend on your local set up.

Your local authority Glow Key Contact will be able to let you know if this is possible.