Can outgress process damage notifications from players who don't set up an account on the website?

Yep... If someone wants to contribute data without an account, all they need to do is set up the forward. If they later decide to make an account, all the old data they forwarded will be retroactively linked to the account they create.

 

Nope, the system does validate incoming emails originated from Niantic and are unaltered (via DKIM headers), but if it's a valid, unaltered damage report, the system will accept it.

In fact, the forwarding instructions change slightly when you are logged in here vs a guest (no need to check the email in your account here since you don't have one).

 

There is not. Outgress does not process emails that didn't originate from Niantic servers or (the important part here) ones that were altered in any way. Otherwise you end up with the ability of users to feed in fake data.

That being said, the system never shows who sent what damage report. Like you can't look up an agent and see any any damage report they sent or see an attack report on a portal and see which agent(s) triggered it.

 

Yes, as long as the email comes unaltered (Gmail doesn't alter emails when using a forwarding filter), it would be fine.

There have not been any Outgress related bans. It's not against Ingress terms of service to share information about portal attacks. That's not to say Niantic would never ban, because technically they can terminate any account without reason if they want. That being said, I'd probably be the first to be banned if they were going to go that route (Niantic is aware of Outgress and has contacted me about Outgress, and the net result was that a few Niantic employees started using Outgress).