HACKER Q&A
📣 Calvin02

What are the risks of using Cloudflare's email routing?


I've always relied on Gmail and other free email services. However, lately I've been hearing more about random account disables and how difficult it is to get your account restored [0].

So, I've slowly started putting in backup systems in case my accounts get disabled, starting with using my own domain name for inbound email from all services.

I use Cloudflare to route inbound emails to my domain to my gmail account, which, btw, is backed up locally. Now, if my gmail account ever gets disabled, I can route all inbound to another account and recover some of my services.

However, this left me wondering, what are the risks of this approach (asides from Cloudflare having visibility into my emails)?

[0] - https://twitter.com/__ChrisR__/status/1368955992105484290

  👤 jgrahamc Accepted Answer ✓
I use Cloudflare's email routing for my main personal domain. It works well and I forward to a gmail account. I know how it works and I'm not worried about "Cloudflare having visibility" because we literally forward the email and don't store anything.
👤 throwaway67743
Email forwarding is stupid, it was stupid 20 years ago and it's even more stupid now, it seems that cloudflare avoided even listing possible issues that come from manipulating emails for forwarding.