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Email forwarded from Fasthosts being bounced

MisterW
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Email forwarded from Fasthosts being bounced

Has anything changed on the email system today ?

I have a domain registered with FastHosts, email to that domain is ( and has been for some time! ) forwarded to my plusnet account.  As from today all forwared email is being bounced by PlusNet with :-

Remote-MTA: dns; mx.avasin.plus.net
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 SPF Validation Failed 

A colleague also has exactly the same problem.

Any ideas why ?

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54 REPLIES 54
MisterW
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Re: Email forwarded from Fasthosts being bounced

Ok, investigation seems to indicate that this is a basic problem with SPF(Sender Policy Framework) and mail forwarding. 

The forwarded email FROM address is the original senders domain BUT the email is sent by the forwarders mail server and so any SPF check on the senders doamin will fail since it's not being sent by their servers. That is unless the forwarder implements SRS (http://www.openspf.org/SRS) which I'm currently trying to get FastHosts to confirm they do (looking at headers they appear not to!).

If they don't, is there anything I can set on my PN email to allow mail from the FastHosts server ? e.g defining a known mail forwarder .

Alternatively , is it still possible to transfer a domain in to PN for hosting only ? (another thread here https://community.plus.net/t5/Everything-else/Domain-Transfer/m-p/1365025 but no reply yet ) That way I can avoid the forwarding completely.

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Oldjim
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Re: Email forwarded from Fasthosts being bounced

does white listing it help

MisterW
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Re: Email forwarded from Fasthosts being bounced

Thanks for the reply Jim, but no, whitelisting both the FastHosts server and the original sending domain doesn't help.

I suspect the SPF check is done well before any whitelisting checks...

I think I might need some advice from @bobpullen to see what might be possible...

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eeiltd
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Re: Email forwarded from Fasthosts being bounced

Hi we have been having the similar issues with a number of PN accounts. Senders are getting bounce messages due to SPF validation error. PN have recently implemented the SPF policy. Whilst implementing this policy may reduce spam, the bounce messages from legitimate senders is far more detrimental than any deluge of spam. Disabling the spam check on the service does not circumvent the SPF check.

 

MisterW
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Re: Email forwarded from Fasthosts being bounced

TBH I thought PN had implemented SPF for some while. You shouldn't really have any problems with direct email from legitimate senders, they ought to have valid SPF records. We're a small business running our own mail server and we have SPF configured for our domian and I have no problem sending emails directly to PlusNet accounts.

 

Disabling the spam check on the service does not circumvent the SPF check.

Tests that one of my colleagues did on his account seemed to indicate that it did. I've just disabled it on my account so I'll post back with the results ( apparently it can take 24-48hrs to take effect! )

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tonymudd
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Registered: ‎08-09-2016

Re: Email forwarded from Fasthosts being bounced

I've been told some of my email is being bounced too.

I'll try turning off the spam settings, but I'm not hopeful either Fasthosts (123-reg) or Plusnet are going to do anything about this in a hurry......

tonymudd
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Re: Email forwarded from Fasthosts being bounced

MisterW
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Re: Email forwarded from Fasthosts being bounced

I'm afraid adding SPF records to your domain doesn't achieve anything in regards to forwarded email being rejected. The problem is that the forwarded email is marked as FROM the original sender and therefore any SPF check is on the senders domain and thus fails since the mail is not being sent by their servers but by your forwarders severs and will not be allowed by the senders SPF records.

However , disabling spam detection completely (it takes a while to take effect) on your account at the PlusNet end does appear to disable SPF checking, I can now get my test mail through from my office account.Smiley

PN are not going to do anything about it, they are quite correctly implementing SPF checking, although maybe they could allow for whitelisting of known forwarders. FastHosts should be fixing their forwarding to use SRS but both a colleague and myself have raised tickets and and after much to-ing and fro-ing regarding SPF records and email spoofing (all total rubbish!) they finally admitted that they don't implement SRS and aren't likely to do anything about it in a hurry. Maybe time to move domain registration to someone who does...

.

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rjm67
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Registered: ‎24-08-2007

Re: Email forwarded from Fasthosts being bounced

This is very useful. I've been experiencing this over the last month or so. Any recommendations for hosts who do use SRS?
malvernnet
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Re: Email forwarded from Fasthosts being bounced

Having spent the last few days with fasthosts going through the process of adding SPF records to no avail it was a relief to find this thread and get some sensible answers, so thanks all. I will disable the PlusNet spam check as suggested and hope that works.

On a separate matter, have PlusNet removed the ability to log support requests online? I am not always in a position to hang on the end of a phone or participate in a web chat. It is often easier to describe the issue and attach any relevant information as an online request.

 

 

MisterW
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Re: Email forwarded from Fasthosts being bounced

This is very useful. I've been experiencing this over the last month or so. Any recommendations for hosts who do use SRS?

As I said above, turning off spam detection completely does (surprisingly!) seem to disable SPF checking. We'll see what the downside of turning it off is...

TBH is not easy to find out whether they do or do not support SRS from published details that I've found so far. Since I still have legacy account facilities, I'll probably just transfer the domain in to PlusNet for Hosting only and have done with any forwarding.

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MisterW
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Re: Email forwarded from Fasthosts being bounced

On a separate matter, have PlusNet removed the ability to log support requests online?

Yes, for all but a very few specific types of query and even then it's very difficult to find the link to raise the request

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eeiltd
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Re: Email forwarded from Fasthosts being bounced

 

MisterW, thanks for your posts, its the most sensible answer that I have been able to get from anyone. PN have been somewhat silent and not forthcoming in the least regarding this issue. Especially as this has affected a number of accounts. Like yourself we have a number of domains registered through 123-reg and Fasthosts with mail forwarding which is the root cause. Like you said, its the fact that incoming messages that are forwarded are coming from 123-reg or Fasthosts and are not in the sender's SPF record that the messages are being rejected. Surely, PN tech support could have come to this conclusion before now and answered people queries with a clear and concise explanation.

Regarding disabling spam option, this is what PN tech support had to say: ... disabling the spam option won't do anything in regards to SPF checking as it's done on the server side.

 

 

As there is not likely to be any resolution to this issue very soon, I am forced to reconfigure domains to remove forwarding from the delivery route.

 

On a personal note, the lack of response from the PN tech support means I will be reconsidering my decision to recommend PN in the future to my clients.

MisterW
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Re: Email forwarded from Fasthosts being bounced

Regarding disabling spam option, this is what PN tech support had to say: ... disabling the spam option won't do anything in regards to SPF checking as it's done on the server side.

TBH that was my understanding as well. My colleague thought he'd disabled spam checking at some point and the forwarding had started working. So I'd tried disabling mine and sure enough (after about 12 hours or so) I was able to get the forwarded emails. You do appear to need to disable spam checking completely though i.e the first box on the spam settings

Should spam filtering be enabled? No

 This recent thread https://community.plus.net/t5/Email/PlusNet-rejecting-some-email/m-p/1365823/highlight/false#M16368 is interesting though, an SPF rejection for what (on the face of it) would appear to be from a valid source, although without the headers it's difficult to prove that. Maybe the PN SPF checking is being a bit over-zealous...

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