google apps gmail smtp pop quirks

Google Apps is a marv thing. And free too. Since looping our email through Google we’ve been getting much less spam. But I’ve noticed the following quirks:

1. smtp.gmail.com is clever about the From field. The user I authenticate as is the one that shows up in the From field when the message is received. So even if I set the From field to be info@..., if I login as simonb@… The receiver sees email From simonb@… Once you’ve authenticated most services let you set the From field to whatever you like.

2. Mail from me to me is invisible to POP. I was emailing error messages to myself which appeared to come from me rather than the from the From field I’d set (see above). These messages appear in the GMail online Inbox but when I try to download via POP they are invisible.

The above is solved easily enough by creating a new user to represent my test box and have the email sent as the test-box-user. Proceed.