Bounces sending emails to GMail accounts

[CraigHealdpoint]

For a few months now, I have been getting bounces when I try to send emails to GMail accounts (including one of my own). The bounce message is as follows:

The following addresses failed:  ??????@????

    host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [142.250.102.26]

    SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:

    550-5.7.26 This mail is unauthenticated, which poses a security risk to the

    550-5.7.26 sender and Gmail users, and has been blocked. The sender must

    550-5.7.26 authenticate with at least one of SPF or DKIM. For this message,

    550-5.7.26 DKIM checks did not pass and SPF check for [healdpoint.co.uk] did

    550-5.7.26 not pass with ip: [212.54.57.97]. The sender should visit

    550-5.7.26  https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#authentication for

    550 5.7.26 instructions on setting up authentication. s17-20020aa7c551000000b0050bc6d73961si125382edr.129 - gsmtp

Has anyone any idea what the problem is - where can I set up Virgin Media's SPF and DKIM settings?

Thanks in advance for any help

Craig

[Graham_A · Accepted solution]

The issue is not with Virginmedia's SPF and DKIM settings.  The problem arises with your own domain settings.

See this post for some helpful pointers:

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Email/Sending-email-using-your-own-domain/td-p/3716147

[ravenstar68]

@CraigHealdpoint 

Looking at your domain your SPF record is currently set as the default for iomart

healdpoint.co.uk. 929 IN TXT "v=spf1 include:_spf.iomartmail.com ~all"

You have two options at this point

1. Amend your outgoing mail to send using iomart's smto servers.  Assuming your account includes email.
2. Amend your SPF record to include Virgin Media's SMTP servers

If you are only using Virgin Media's email servers to send your outbound mail, then you can amend your SPF record to the following

"v=spf1 include:_spf.virginmedia.com ~all"

Alternatively, if you want to use iosmarts servers as well you need to combine the two

"v=spf1 include:_spf.iomartmail.com include:_spf.virginmedia.com ~all"

[ravenstar68]

To add to my last post it looks like you are with Easyspace as your domain registrar.  If this is the case then have a look at this site

https://www.easyspace.com/blog/2014/11/24/how-to-add-and-update-your-dns-records/

Tim

[mrcs58]

So it's _spf.virginmedia.com rather than _smtprelay.virginmedia.com as in your 2018 posting on this topic?

According to https://tools.wordtothewise.com/spf/minimize/_spf.virginmedia.com that resolve to a whole bunch of IP addresses, but it's not obvious to me that 212.54.57.97 is included. I'm getting the same bounce, with that IP address.

Thanks

[CraigHealdpoint]

Thanks to everyone for your help. I am starting to get an idea of where to look, but I think I have a bit of learning to do before I can try to get things sorted. I am currently lost with how things are set up - all I know is that it used to work, but now it doesn't always. I will have a read through the three links you have pointed me to:

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Email/Sending-email-using-your-own-domain/td-p/3716147 

https://www.easyspace.com/blog/2014/11/24/how-to-add-and-update-your-dns-records/ and 

https://tools.wordtothewise.com/spf/minimize/_spf.virginmedia.com to try and educate myself.

I have  a personal Domain name (healdpoint.co.uk) registered (via Easyspace) so that if ever I change ISP, my email address can stay the same. My ISP is Virginmedia, and my email address with them is [MOD EDIT: email address removed]. This is what I use for almost of my emails, but have this set up so that it uses the email address [MOD EDIT: email address removed] and forwards all to my Outlook account. 

It looks like I will need to make sure all of the various settings are consistent. Once I have read through everything, I will give it a try - hopefully, this will sort it out. 

Thanks again for all of your help.

[ravenstar68]

---

@mrcs58 wrote:

So it's _spf.virginmedia.com rather than _smtprelay.virginmedia.com as in your 2018 posting on this topic?

According to https://tools.wordtothewise.com/spf/minimize/_spf.virginmedia.com that resolve to a whole bunch of IP addresses, but it's not obvious to me that 212.54.57.97 is included. I'm getting the same bounce, with that IP address.

Thanks

---

Virgin Media have updated their email setup since I made my post in 2018,

I have run a test with a fake virginmedia email addresMail sent from this IP address: 212.54.57.97
Mail from (Sender): test@virginmedia.com
Mail checked using this SPF policy: v=spf1 include:_spf.virginmedia.com ~all
Results - PASS sender SPF authorized

This confirms the advice given in this thread.

I'll ask the mod team to amend my advice from 2018

[ravenstar68]

@CraigHealdpoint 

SPF is used to say the following.

Mail from my domain will come from servers on these IP addresses.

So when Virgin Media's outbound mail system talks to to Google's inbound ones the following happens

Google records the IP address of Virgin Media's server that's connecting to it.
It then checks for a TXT record on your bare domain that starts with v=spf1 and calculates the ranges of IP addresses they correspond to.

If the IP address if the server doesn't match the IP address/es that the SPF record indicates then the SPF check fails

@mrcs58 212.54.57.97 is part of the212.54.57.64/26 range of IP addresses (/26 means the network part of the address is contained in the first 26 bits of the IP address.

[CraigHealdpoint]

All/Anyone,

I have had an online Chat with Easyspace support, and they suggest that I need to get Virgin Media to tell me their SPF Record entry, so that Easyspace can use this.

How do I get the VM SPF entry?

[ravenstar68]

It's already in the thread.  The thread @Graham_A linked to earlier has also been updated.

If you want to get it yourself just use nslookup , dig (if you are using Apple Mac or Linux) or resolve_dnsname in powershell

timothydutton@Timothys-MacBook-Air ~ % nslookup -query=TXT virginmedia.com
Server:		192.168.1.1
Address:	192.168.1.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
virginmedia.com	text = "v=spf1 include:_spf.virginmedia.com ~all"
virginmedia.com	text = "google-site-verification=KbeJxdxCKM9QHNt48zTFpf1D0r-yjNk3DdCe01-OgIw"
virginmedia.com	text = "google-site-verification=R-J9dx61sdEDE_ll7mkZ6OYTjVeRi_X-WuV_DaHmYTg"
virginmedia.com	text = "facebook-domain-verification=q53lz3d30kvab6wx6xwc5tffmq6xh3"

Authoritative answers can be found from:

(base) timothydutton@Timothys-MacBook-Air ~ % 

The top result is Virgin Media's SPF record

Tim