# Bounced emails not being detected

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/bounced-emails-not-being-detected/293518>\
**Category:** Product Support\
**Tags:** email\
**Created:** [January 30, 2024, 6:36pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bounced-emails-not-being-detected/293518 "2024-01-30T18:36:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 6

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**Author:** ![supermathie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/supermathie/32/507518_2.png) [@supermathie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/supermathie)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 7:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bounced-emails-not-being-detected/293518/6 "2024-01-30T19:39:38Z")

</div>

> [@RBoy](#):
>
> the destination SMTP domain server which receives the bounced email doesn’t recognize the `+` addressing, so it only forwards emails based on the `To` field to the gmail address which is picked up by discourse via POP

It would help a **lot** if you wrote what you were actually using for settings, even anonymised slightly.

You might also want to look into setting `alternative_reply_by_email_addresses`.

> [@RBoy](#):
>
> can it put somewhere else?

I don’t believe so.

If possible, for your setup I’d recommend something like:

- set `reply_by_email_address` to `inbound+%{reply_key}@forum.hostname`
- configure a mail server to receive email for `forum.hostname` and deliver it all to `the.gmail.account@gmail.com`

Here the intermediate mail server doesn’t need to understand plus-addressing, it just needs to forward on everything for the domain.

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