VirginMedia rejecting Force9 mail - non-compliance with the SPF or DMARC

[#1]

Hi,

I've read a few posts on the DMARC policy/SPF, related to owned domains.

I'm using Virginmedia as my SMTP service (they are my ISP), and i am sending from my Force9 subdomain  (xxxxx@wokfm.f9.co.uk), as I've had this address for about 25 years.

VIrginmedia SMTP are now failing to deliver any mail for me:

I am sorry to have to inform you that your message, "xxxxxxx", could not be delivered to xxxxxx@xxx.com.

Your message have been determined to be suspicious due to non-compliance with the SPF or DMARC policy for the domain wokfm.f9.co.uk, which this message appears to have originated from.

SPF and DMARC is quite new to me (although I do run a couple of registered domains -so I'll need to look at those in due course);   Virgin guidance notes request that the required changes are made from the originator records, but since this is a plusnet/force9 subdomain, i have no control over that.

I've read other threads about making the required changes to the records for your domain, when using F9/Plusnet relays, but i think my situation is different;  How can I add the required changes at the F9 end, when all i have is a subdomain, so that Virgin SMTP does not fail? 

Any advice appreciated

Rich

Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): Post released from Spam Filter.

[#2]

SPF allows the specification of which SMTP servers are permitted to send email on behalf of a domain. IT can be used by the receiving mail server to identify the mail as authorised or not ( and thus possibly spam ). Virgin should not be preventing you sending mail through their server due to non compliance with SPF BUT the likelyhood is that any email sent via their server would be treated as spam when received.

You should be sending mail via the f9  server (relay.force9.co.uk I think?) as that is the server defined in the SPF records for the f9.co.uk domains I believe.

Since the f9 accounts are legacy ones and you (presumably) don't have a broadband account anymore I'm not sure whether the ability to authenticate with the f9 relay is still available to you, I know that people with PlusNet email only accounts now retain the ability to authenticate with relay.plus.net.

Hopefully someone with more knowledge of the position with mail only f9 accounts will come along with more information

[#3]

Hi Rich.

I suspect the issue may be related to the changes we've made on the back of this thread/notice.

You'll need to send using the outgoing server relay.force9.net authenticating with your mailbox username/password, which is available to everyone with an active account regardless whether the account is a free one or a broadband account.

Let us know how this goes.