Forwarding and delivering messages

When an email arrives at one of your aliases, Cleanbox processes it through your filters, contact states, and spam checks. If the message passes, it is delivered to your connected mailbox via IMAP. This article explains how delivery works and what options you have for managing delivered messages.

How delivery works

Cleanbox connects to your mailbox using IMAP and places the email in your chosen destination folder (default: INBOX). The message appears in your email client as if it was sent directly to you — with the original sender, subject, and content intact.

During delivery, Cleanbox can apply additional IMAP flags based on contact states:

• Prioritized contacts — messages are flagged as important (\Flagged)
• Muted contacts — messages are marked as read (\Seen)

Message actions

From the message detail view, you have several actions available:

Deliver

If a message was quarantined or failed to deliver, you can manually trigger delivery. Click Deliver to push the message to your mailbox. This is useful for:

• Releasing quarantined messages that turned out to be legitimate
• Retrying failed deliveries after fixing mailbox connection issues

Forward

You can forward any message to a different email address. Enter the destination address and Cleanbox sends the full message content to that recipient. This is useful when you need to share an email with a colleague or move it to a different account.

Spam feedback

You can mark messages as spam or not spam (ham). This feeds back into the spam detection system:

• Mark as spam — teaches the filter that this type of message is unwanted
• Mark as not spam — teaches the filter that this type of message is legitimate

You can only submit feedback once per message. This training data improves detection accuracy over time.

Important: aliases are receive-only

Cleanbox aliases are designed for receiving email. You cannot send outbound email or replies through an alias. When you reply to a message in your email client, the reply is sent from your own email address — not from the alias.

If you need to keep your real email address hidden when replying, consider using your email provider's built-in alias features or a dedicated sending service.

Delivery failures

If Cleanbox cannot deliver a message to your mailbox, it is marked as failed. Common causes:

• IMAP connection error — your mailbox is unreachable (server down, network issue)
• Authentication failed — your IMAP password has changed or expired
• Mailbox full — no storage space left in your email account
• Folder not found — the configured destination folder was deleted

Check your mailbox settings and verify the connection. Once the issue is resolved, you can retry delivery from the message detail view.