Tag Archives: SPF

GMail fails SPF checks on POP3 fetched messages

It seems that, under certain conditions, GMail reports failed SPF checks for messages fetched via POP3 from other mail servers.

I noticed this behaviour on messages received, for example, by mail servers where an internal relay is used, like the following message sent from PayPal (which uses an hard-fail policy):

Delivered-To: MYSELF@gmail.com
...
Received-SPF: fail (google.com: domain of xxxyyyzzz@emea.e.paypal.com does not
        designate A.B.C.D as permitted sender) client-ip=A.B.C.D;
Received: by 10.64.225.172 with POP3 ...
X-Gmail-Fetch-Info: MYSELF@MYDOMAIN.TLD 3 pop3.MYDOMAIN.TLD
        995 MYSELF@MYDOMAIN.TLD
Return-Path: <xxxyyyzzz@emea.e.paypal.com>
Delivered-To: MYSELF@MYDOMAIN.TLD
Received: from server1.MYPROVIDER.TLD (A.B.C.D)
        by server2.MYPROVIDER.TLD with SMTP; ...
Received: from outbound.emea.e.paypal.com (96.47.30.179)
        by mx1.MYPROVIDER.TLD with SMTP; ...
Return-Path: <xxxyyyzzz@emea.e.paypal.com>
...
From: "PayPal" <paypal@e.paypal.it>
To: MYSELF@MYDOMAIN.TLD

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