Hacking Gmail

Sending Mail

N

ow that you know how to read the mail in your Inbox

with your own programs, it’s time to move on to replying

to those mails by sending your own messages.

Sending Mail with Gmail SMTP

The first thing to remember is that Gmail provides its own SMTP

server. This offers two major features. First, you can use the SMTP

server from your own e-mail application, which is a great help if

you’re traveling and your usual e-mail provider is unreachable. The

second use is that every single scripting language you might have a

desire to use has standard SMTP support available as a library, and

the support for TLS encryption, which you need to connect to

Gmail, is being added apace.

First, though, the settings you’ll need:

 Server name:smtp.google.com

 Username:[email protected]

 Password:Your Gmail password

 Security:Yes, using TLS

One thing to note about this technique is that Gmail will rewrite

your e-mail headers. It replaces the From: and Reply-to: lines

with your Gmail address because Gmail also automatically adds

the so-called Domain Keys to their outgoing e-mails, allowing

spam-hit system administrators to block fake Gmail mail from

their servers. Without the Domain Keys this wouldn’t work, but

Gmail can’t send mail with a different From: or Reply-to: address

without breaking the Domain Key.

̨Using the Gmail

SMTP server

̨Sending mail

with Perl

̨Replying to

mail with Perl

chapter

in this chapter