tvl-depot/users/wpcarro/website/blog/posts/send-mail-as-2fa.md
William Carroll 885f3fb60a feat(wpcarro/blog): Publish "2FA and Gmail's \"Send mail as\""
Small blog post about how I configured myself out of my personal email.

Change-Id: Ibb8834b2150f94dba5f46a8ea634e7e9813b76a5
Reviewed-on: https://cl.tvl.fyi/c/depot/+/4817
Tested-by: BuildkiteCI
Reviewed-by: wpcarro <wpcarro@gmail.com>
2022-01-08 06:22:14 +00:00

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Markdown

## Prelude
This is a short story about how I configured myself out of my own email. Posting
this as an exercise in humility, a tutorial for my future self in case of
amnesia, and penance for my sins.
## Background
- I have 2x Gmail accounts: **work** and **personal**.
- I configure **work** to send emails as **personal**.
- I configure **personal** to forward incoming emails to **work**.
This allows me to use **work** and manage both of my inboxes as one. I recently
added two-factor authentication (2FA) to **personal**, forgot about it, and
spent a few days unable to send **personal** emails from any **work** device.
## Symptoms
Whenever I tried to send emails on behalf of **personal**, I'd receive the
following error message as a reply:
> You're sending this from a different address using the 'Send mail as' feature.
> The settings for your 'Send mail as' account are misconfigured or out of date.
> Check those settings and try resending.
Useful error message if you ask me (especially in retrospect), but because I had
*forgotten* that I setup 2FA for **personal**, I naively assumed this issue
might magically disappear given enough time... kind of how restarting your
device resets the state and causes the symptoms of a certain class of bugs to
disappear.
After a few days of mounting frustration, I decided to take a closer look...
## Solution
- Create an "App Password" for **personal**:
[instructions](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833?hl=en).
- Login to **work** and delete **personal** from `Settings > Accounts > Send
mail as`.
- `Add another email address` for **personal** using the "App Password" you
just created.
And now I'm back in business!