Hiding imap account and still using it for outgoing email

Hippo Man hippoman at gmail.com
Mon Jun 6 18:43:30 UTC 2022


I'm using dovecot 2.3.18 with a fairly recent version of postfix
on my Debian-11 box.

I have a question, and I'm not sure whether it pertains to
dovecot, postfix, or both. I'm asking first here, but I'm glad
to go to a postfix forum if it turns out that my question
doesn't pertain to dovecot.

On my server, account management in both dovecot and
postfix is managed by the same mysql database, and postfix
is configured to use dovecot's authentication mechanism.

I have an email address which I do not want to be seen as
one which can be accessed for imap nor pop3. However, I
want to receive email to that address, and I, myself, still do
want to be able to use imap or pop3 in order to access
email that is sent to that address.

I have something I want to try in order to accomplish this, but
before I do, I want to make sure that no one can see any issues
or "gotchas" with the following approach, or perhaps that there
is an easier, more straightforward way to accomplish what I want
to do:

Assume the email address in question is "myemail at domain.com",
and assume that I own and manage the "domain.com" domain.

(1) Create another email address called "other at domain.com",
and set it up with the same configuration as is currently set up
for "myemail at domain.com"

(2) In all my email clients, set the outgoing mail address and
reply-to address for "other at domain.com" to be "myemail at domain.com".
This way, all outgoing email from "other at domain.com" will look
like it is being sent from "myemail at domain.com".

(3) Change "myemail.com" (in the database used by dovecot
and postfix) from being a bona-fide email address into
becoming simply a forwarding email alias for "other at domain.com".

(4) In all my email clients, change the inbox that I previously used
for "myemail at domain.com" to now be associated with
"other at domain.com".

So ... if anyone sends email to "myemail at domain.com", it will
automatically go to the "other at domain.com" inbox. And when I reply
to those emails, the sender and reply-to addresses will still be
"myemail at domain.com".

And now, dovecot will no longer see "myemail at domain.com" as a
mailbox from which email can be retrieved. And I will still be able to
retrieve that email via imap or pop3 from the "other at domain.com"
account.

Do you folks think this will work? And again, is there perhaps a
simpler way to accomplish this?

Thank you in advance for any thoughts and suggestions.

-- 
 hippoman at gmail.com
 Take a hippopotamus to lunch today.
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