Can the Google Workspace administrator access your emails without knowing your password?
I’ve been asked several times if it was possible to view user emails, so I did my research and tested if it was actually possible. Google allows Google Workspace administrators to monitor and audit user emails. An administrator can use Google Vault, content compliance standards, the Audit API, or email delegation to view and audit user emails. G Suite administrators are advised to consider local laws before conducting email audits on their users’ mailboxes.
In this article I will show you how you can get a bcc copy of your users / employees’ emails without knowing their G Suite password.
You must be a G Suite administrator, and you must use the G Suite Basic, Business, Government, Education or Enterprise edition as it does not work for the free version of Gmail.
You will see how being a G Suite Administrator you can obtain a copy of the emails sent and received by your users without knowing their passwords or without putting them in their mailboxes.
Note ..: This option is primarily intended for auditing, you should take into account the legislation and policy of your country before attempting this method of accessing your users’ emails.
Scenario:
For auditing purposes, you want to track incoming and outgoing email messages (including domain ones) from one or all Google Apps users, without asking or changing their password or proposing a forwarding rule on their mailboxes. .
Solution explanation:
To achieve this, you will create a server rule in G Suite (formerly Google Apps) that you can apply to a user, or to an OU or even to all users.
This rule establishes that any message containing @ yourdomain.com in the message header will send its copy to the ID you define …
System Requirements :
This solution will only work with the Basic, Business, Education and Government edition of G Suite (Google Apps), and not the free edition
Indice del contenido
STEP 1 – ACCESS TO THE G SUITE CONTROL PANEL
To achieve this, we need to access the G Suite administration console.
I assume you have admin permission to perform this task, if not you have to become G Suite Administrator or Delegated Administrator.
STEP 2 – NAVIGATE TO THE APPS
Once you’ve logged into the Google Workspace Control Panel, click the APPS icon in the Control Panel.
Click Apps in the G suite dashboard
Navigate and click Gmail
STEP 3 – GO TO GMAIL
As we are going to apply a server side to our Gmail application, which will give us a bcc copy of all emails sent and received from our users
Click on the GMAIL icon
STEP 4 – CLICK ON THE ADVANCED SETTINGS
The rule we want to apply is a part of Gmail’s advanced settings, go ahead and click on it
Click Advanced Settings in the Google Workspace admin console
STEP 5 – SELECT THE ORGANIZATION UNIT
If you want to receive a copy in bcc format from all users in your domain, you can select the main organizational unit.
If you want to apply it to a specific role, such as sales or accounting, or even just a few users, you can create a new organizational unit and place the necessary users in it.
After selecting the correct organizational unit, scroll down to find “Content Compliance” and click “Configure”
STEP 6 – DEFINE THE SCOPE OF THE RULE
It is recommended to add a description for your rule to ensure that other administrators of your domain can refer to it and understand the purpose of this rule in its absence.
Select the emails you want to get as bcc for users, you can select any or all including incoming, outgoing, sending or internal receiving, for the sake of this example I’m only considering incoming and outgoing ones.
STEP 7 – DEFINE THE EXPRESSION
Let’s define our condition, think of it as an IF / ELSE statement:
Select “If any of the following items match the message”
Click “Add” to add a condition statement
Click on “Advance content”
The location should be “Full heads”
The match type must be “Contains text”
The content must be “yourdomainanme.com” (you need to change your domain name.com to your real domain name)
Save your condition
Explanation: In this step, we have created a condition (IF statement) that indicates if “@ yourdomain.com” is in the message header, then match the condition, now if your users send or receive the message through your corporate id, @ yourdomain.com will surely be there in the headers as it is not possible to send / receive without it from / to your corporate id, however if your requirement is a bit complex you can also use regex expressions to define your criteria .
STEP 8 – WHO SHOULD RECEIVE BCC?
Scroll down and click “Add more recipients.”
Click Preview
Check the box “Change the recipient of the envelope”
Select “replace envelope container”
Enter the email ID where you would like to get a copy of the Bcc.
Scroll down and follow the next step in this article
STEP 9 – PREPARE THE TOPIC (RECOMMENDED)
In this step, we will define a way to separate these emails from the regular ones, so that you can easily identify them and filter / tag them if necessary.
Click on “Prepare for Business”
Add anything you want to add to the subject of these BCC emails, for example {{BCC}}
Now, all these cc copies that you will get will have {{BCC}} in front of the subject, which will help you filter in Gmail and put them under a label / folder.
Save changes
STEP 10 – DONE!
Congratulations, now you will get a bcc copy of your users in the mailbox you put in your condition as shown in the example above
Google Workspace USER EMAIL AUDITING FAQ
Here are details on some additional ways a G Suite administrator can monitor and audit user emails. If you can’t find the answer, feel free to ask in the comments below.
Are there more ways the Google Workspace admin can access my emails?
G Suite Admin cannot directly access users ’emails, however, Yes, you have the following options to look at users’ emails:
(I) Google Vault:
G Suite has different plans, and one of them is called “G Suite for Business” which comes with an application called “Google Vault”, which keeps a copy of all user emails, chat log, group messages , files in Google Drive and Team Drive.
So even if a user deletes their email or a file in Google Drive, they can access Google Vault as an administrator and search the user’s emails.
Please note: The solution to access your users’ email will not work with the G Suite Basic plan, as Google does not make copies with it.
(II) Email delegation:
G Suite offers an email delegation feature where a user can delegate their Gmail mailbox to someone, this is usually done by a user, however the G Suite Admin can also do it through the Gmail API without users being realize.
Note: Although G Suite Admins can configure email delegation behind the scenes, if you are a user you can go to the delegation settings (Gmail -> Settings -> Accounts -> Grant access to your account) and check if your account is delegated to someone and you can also delete the delegation.
(III) Google Workspace content compliance rule:
G Suite Admin can also set up a rule in the admin console to activate a bcc copy of all user (or required) emails, and this solution works with all G Suite paid plans.
(IV) Google Workspace Admin Audit API:
In case your requirement is not met by the above solutions, you can consider putting a custom solution based on your needs with G Suite Email Audit API. You don’t need to start from scratch here either, if you know a little about Google Apps Script, you can use this OAuth 2 library to easily use the Audit API within Apps Script.
Can I access my Google Workspace user as an administrator?
NO, you cannot access any of your G Suite user accounts even if you have super administrator rights.
The only way to do this is to first reset the user’s password and then use it to access the user account, but the user can easily find out as they will not be able to access with the old password.
So if you are a G Suite admin and really want to monitor your users’ emails, consider the solutions mentioned above.
Is it legal or ethical for the Gmail Administrator to read users’ emails?
I’ve been working with G Suite partners and all of my employers use G Suite (formerly Google Apps) for email and collaboration.
I have this same question, and after asking some of my employers and googling, I honestly don’t have a clear answer on it.
Some people say that when you work for a company, it is assumed that you are using the assets of the company and that they retain the rights to investigate anything if necessary.
Also, as I am not a legal expert, I will not comment on it, but if you are a user, feel free to read your employment contract, look at the laws of your state and / or country, or even contact your employer to ask. .
I’ve seen cases where, due to a legal investigation, G Suite administrators have put the user’s mailbox on legal hold (in Google Vault), so if you’re a user regardless From the G Suite, my recommendation would be to use your Gmail assuming your employer can access your emails.
Through these links, you can try a few days of Google Workspace FREE and if you like it you can also get a Google Workspace promo code of 10% discount during the first year: