SPF - email flagged or rejected as spam.

[McDuff]

I have a problem that some of my emails are getting rejected or flagged as spam due to SPF warnings. Probably not completely without reason.

I am using pegasus mail (pmail) as mail client. Very good program.

For my work at the Czech Academy of sciences (CAS), I use my CAS email address with the CAS pop3 details. However, their Microsoft Office365 server does not like it when I use Pegasus Mail for sending emails, so I use my FQ domain for outgoing mails.

However, occasionally (not often), I run into an SPF-rejected email. I just now found this thread, and enabled SPF in my domain, as recommended by Bob.

Should I create my own SPF record as well, and how to do that and add it to my DNS?

Microsoft server does not like pegasus and throws up a 535 5.7.3 Authentication unsuccessful error.

[Erica C.]

I'm having this problem with list messages and even mailing list confirmation messages ending up in spam. Would this be related and something that would be addressed by SPF?

[Syneryder]

Also, just confirming - if I have to handcraft an SPF record, to allow email sent from FutureQuest it looks like I need to add include:spf-all.futurequest.net into the SPF record? So I get something like this:

v=spf1 a mx include:spf-all.futurequest.net include:spf.someOtherNonFQemailhost.com ?all

I'm also assuming the a means allow mail from the IP Address included in the A records, and MX means to allow domains included in the MX records. And the ?all means to regard servers not in the SPF neutrally, ie they might be okay but it's not a guaranteed okay.

Edit: Ahh, the above line might be a bad idea. I used this SPF Record Tester / Validator and it gave me a Perm Error due to "Too Many DNS Lookups", which this SPF checker helped me diagnose. I guess adding the a mx and the extra includes might have been a bad idea. I'm still learning about this SPF stuff....

[Syneryder]

Originally Posted by McDuff

For my work at the Czech Academy of sciences (CAS), I use my CAS email address... I use my FQ domain for outgoing mails.

I just re-read this part, and I don't think adding an SPF record to your FQ domain helps in this specific case, if you're using the CAS email address as your From address when sending via FQ. It's the SPF record on the Czech Academy Of Sciences DNS that would need to be modified, to allow/authorize sending email from the FutureQuest mail servers in the name of CAS.

[McDuff]

Originally Posted by Syneryder

I just re-read this part, and I don't think adding an SPF record to your FQ domain helps in this specific case, if you're using the CAS email address as your From address when sending via FQ. It's the SPF record on the Czech Academy Of Sciences DNS that would need to be modified, to allow/authorize sending email from the FutureQuest mail servers in the name of CAS.

I thought that first as well, but then I wondered why.

Basically, we do this so that our outgoing mail does not get close to the CAS servers, because they throw an "not authorized" error when sending mail from Pegasus Mail through CAS. My colleague has the same problem, and this is a known problem with office365 servers; google 530 5.7.57 SMTP error and you get lots of pages about this, with no real solutions.

So I would expect that the CAS servers are not involved in the outgoing mails at all.