Some government agencies (including the National Science Foundation) have implemented email security policies to protect users against email fraud. As a result of these policies, an email message from those agencies may be flagged as potentially fraudulent and blocked from distribution if certain rules are violated, such as using email auto-forwarding or third-party email distribution services. This is done to ensure the authenticity of the messages and combat phishing.

A direct effect of these policies is that forwarding emails from government agencies from Microsoft 365 to Gmail may cause Google to mark them as spam. Since these policies are controlled by the senders, IT Services cannot correct this problem.

There are potential workarounds:

• Create an email forwarding rule for messages from NSF or other .gov addresses to move them from the Spam folder back to your Inbox. You can learn how to create a filter to move items from Spam back to your inbox by reading Google's article Create rules to filter your emails.
• Check the Gmail Spam folder frequently.

As these policies are adopted by more companies (e.g., Facebook, AOL, and Yahoo), forwarding your email will increase the risk of missing important messages. Please consider using your Microsoft 365 email instead of forwarding it if you are concerned about the consistent delivery of your email. You can access Microsoft Office email from the UChicago Microsoft 365 portal at portal.office.com.