SPF with Gmail

[keencs]

A number of my cPaneil email accounts use Gmail to send and receive email from my cPanel server using POP3. Normally this works great. Recently, an number of users have complained that messages sent by other users/domains on the same server are being deleted or flagged as spam by Gmail.

I started investigating and determined that Gmail checks SPF on messages that it retrieves via POP3. Because these messages are missing the cPanel server's 'Received By' header Gmail thinks that the message is being sent by the user's PC and therefore SPF fails.

I have researched this high and low and have come to the conclusion that this isn't a Gmail problem but rather a problem with Exim not sending adding the server's info to the header when it is a local delivery email.

Has anyone else encountered this? Is there any way to have Exim do this to have SPF pass? All users are authenticating before sending mail.

Ryan

 

[danrussell]

Hi Ryan ,

Is SPF record added to the sender domain name? If not, then add it and then check. So that Gmail can pass the SPF test.

 

[keencs]

Hi Ryan ,

Is SPF record added to the sender domain name? If not, then add it and then check. So that Gmail can pass the SPF test.

I believe you misread my message. Gmail is retrieving the email from my cPanel server via POP3, and checking the SPF record at that time. Because the cPanel server didn't add a header entry in the message for itself, Gmail thinks the email originated from my desktop. It then checks the IP address of my desktop against the SPF record. This fails because my desktop isn't there (which it shouldn't be.)

Example headers showing this:

Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
       spf=fail (google.com: domain of [email protected] does not designate 1.1.1.1 as permitted sender) [email protected]
Received-SPF: fail (google.com: domain of [email protected] does not designate 1.1.1.1 as permitted sender) client-ip=1.1.1.1;
Received: by 10.180.76.99 with POP3 id h11mf1354xxx2wiw.4;
        Mon, 29 Dec 2014 16:32:53 -0800 (PST)
X-Gmail-Fetch-Info: mygmailaddre[email protected] 1 mycpanel.server.com 995 [email protected]

Where:
1.1.1.1 = Is my desktop's IP
mycpanel.server.com = My cPanel Server
[email protected] = My cPaneil Email Address
[email protected] = My gmail Email Address

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello

Could you open a support ticket using the link in my signature so we can take a closer look? You can post the ticket number here so we can update this thread with the outcome.

Thank you.