Workaround for Forwarding Paypal Emails

On our previous shared hosting server, we had the need to setup a secondary paypal address for not one but two clients. The clients originally had their paypal accounts created using a shared email service (such as gmail), but later decided it would be more professional to use a paypal@example.com type of email address.

Normally, we create email forwarding accounts and rarely create webmail accounts hosted on our server. The problem isn’t storage requirements (storage is cheap and these servers offer unlimited storage), but the problem is poor SPAM filtering and unattractive webmail interfaces. So, by creating forwarders to their Gmail or other webmail accounts, and linking the two accounts, all of these problems are solved.

Here is where the problem is. If you want to setup a forwarder account, such as paypal@example.com, and forward the emails to your third party email address, the emails will not forward. We ran a  series of tests and email traces and everything was working properly, but Paypal emails just would not forward. Most likely, one of the headers that Paypal puts in the email is one to prevent forwarding of the emails (to reduce problems and account hijacking most likely).

So, the way to fix this is to create a standard POP3 email address for your server and download it using your email client. Gmail is nice because it can be setup to check third party POP3 accounts periodically, and every time you attempt to find new emails.

To configure this, you will need to take the following steps:

• Log into your shared hosting cPanel
• Create a new email address for your domain (paypal@ or something)
• You can set a low inbox size of around 1MB, Paypal emails aren’t large
• Remember the username format and password you use
• Log into your Gmail account
• Click the settings link, then open Accounts and Import
• Go down to Check mail using POP3 and click Add POP3 Account
• From here, you can setup your settings to connect to your POP3 account
• Make sure “Leave a copy of mail on server” is UNCHECKED so emails don’t build up

And that is how you setup a secondary Paypal email address to send to your third party email client to get around the inability for Paypal emails to be forwarded.