Sending messages to all contacts in Contact Group
 

I regularly send out a message to about 500 individuals, using a specific alias, which forwards the email to the 500 contacts in a contact group.

In the past, Fastmail used to have an option that "Also send to all contacts in..." could be restricted to only passing on emails sent from a Fastmail account aliases... The result would be that, only Fastmail accounts could send out to all contacts in the contact group.

This worked great for me for 15 years. Only had one mess-up in 15 years...

Now, that option is gone, and random people are accidentally regularly sending something to the 500 individuals. I need a solution...

Is there a way to do a Sieve Script that will
Allow me to send a message to a specific alias, and will
1. Check if the 'sender' is a specific alias
2. Send a copy of the message to all contacts in a specific contact list
3. reset the "from" and "to" so that the specific alias will be hidden from all recipients (so that they cannot send a message to the group by accident)

Any ideas?

Deleted

(What I wrote was nonsense, sorry !)

Is this what you suggested?

Rule
All of
To "Newsie@mydomain"
From "Me@mydomain"
Send a Copy "contactlist@mydomain"

Recipients get emails from "Me@mydomain" and the to shows "Newsie @ my domain"
If people try to "replyAll", the message doesn't get copied to the contact list!

Only problem, is that other Fastmail users now get a "Reply to List" as the default, which WILL go to "contactlist@mydomain" which still exposes the list...

Anything else I'm not thinking about?

Even if I BCC the list, the list still gets exposed to Fastmail users, and "Reply to List" is the default option...

I had another brainstorm, but I've run into a dead end with this too...

I used the following sieve script, and placed it as the first script in my account:

if
allof(
address :is ["To","Cc","Resent-To","X-Delivered-To"] "contactlist@mydomain",
not address :regex "From" ["me@mydoman", me2@mydomain"]
)
{
discard;
stop;
}

This seems to discard emails from outside the fastmail platform, but emails sent from other fastmail accounts are still forwarded to the contact list....

It appears that emails from within the Fastmail platform get routed to forward to the contactlist alias, BEFORE they reach the sieve script...

Thoughts?

Which is what "How to set up email forwarding" says under Alias forwarding.

So, do I have any options at all to try to accomplish this?

In a hurry, and no time to test.

If you add an explicit Reply To in your message (in conjunction with using bcc) does this override FastMail's default behaviour?

There may be a better solution, but I've tried this out, and it works...

In the desktop version of webmail
• Mail > Settings > Users & Aliases
• Enter password & click 'Unlock'
• Click 'New alias'
• Enter a new, hard-to-guess alias,
e.g. massfwd.958336964 @ yrdomain.co
• Remove the 'Deliver to' address(es)
• Tick the 'Also send to all contacts in' checkbox
• Select the relevant mass-forwarding contact group
• Click 'Save'
• Settings > Contacts > New contact
• Enter a simple name e.g. MassFwd
• Enter your hard-to-guess alias as the address
• Click 'Save'
• Wait for 15 minutes for the alias to propagate

Now when you have a mail you want sent to your mass-forwarding contact group, leave the To and Cc fields blank and just type 'MassFwd' into the Bcc field to call up that hard-to-guess alias.
Do not add the name of the contact group nor add any other addresses.
Recipients will see the address you sent it from, but not the secret alias nor any other addresses.

That doesn't seem to do anything...

The only problem with this, is that it STILL puts "Reply to List" as the default for Fastmail users who receive the email...

Seems to me, that if the list is in the BCC, the user, even if a Fastmail user, shouldn't be able to reply to the list...

The solution I'm coming up with, is to simply type the name of the contact group, in the BCC Field, for instance, if it's "Email List" as I type "Email" in the BCC field, It will show "Email (Groups)" I select this, and the 600 email addresses populate the BCC Field.

Not pretty, but it's the only way I can find so that even Fastmail users cannot reply to the group...

I really wish Fastmail would change the functionality when a send to contact group is in the BCC field...

This doesn't happen for me. I wonder what's different in your set-up from mine?

When I receive the email, the "Reply" button turns into "Reply to list"

This doesn't happen for you?

Here's what I see
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1doS...ucx1C0hzTts53v

No, I just tested it again and for me the default button is just 'reply', not 'reply to list'.
Here's what I see:
http://grhm.mm.st/emd/#single:grhm-scrnsht.jpg

However, if I select 'more', 'reply to list' is one of the options... and choosing it puts my supposedly secret alias into the 'to' box !
Surely that shouldn't happen ?!
If you put an address in Bcc then it should be hidden from and inaccessible by recipients.
That is the whole point of Bcc !
You seem to have found a bug.
I suggest you raise a support ticket.

And here's why... Looking at the emails in a Google account, in the email header, there are two entries:

List-Id: <contactlist.mydomain.tld>
List-Post: <mailto:contactlist@mydomain.tld>

These are entered into the message, even if the message is sent via BCC...