[email protected] - Is it working?

Question

I have several Google Apps For Your Domain clients each with an SPF record like:

Hostname:
@

TXT Data:
v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all

Many of these have been setup for months, let alone the typical 48 hour DNS refresh period. When sending email to:

[email protected]

I get back a PASS on SPF, from all domains. Yet - when sending email to:

[email protected]

I get a Mail Delivery error as follows:

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

    [email protected]

Technical details of permanent failure:

Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain.
We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the
cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 5.7.1
<[email protected]>: Recipient address rejected: SPF Tests: Mail-From
Result="pass": Mail From="[email protected]" HELO name="mail-yi0-f45.google.com"
HELO Result="none" Remote IP="209.85.218.45" (state 14).

----- Original message -----

Received: by 10.150.204.10 with SMTP id b10mr1415096ybg.340.1296170820591;
 Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:27:00 -0800 (PST)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Received: by 10.151.51.18 with HTTP; Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:26:40 -0800 (PST)
From: Chris Moschini <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:26:40 -0800
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Subject: Test4
To: [email protected]
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=000e0cd2e71a546250049adc49bb

Answer 1

By design, an error is returned when sending email to [email protected]. The error message is what contains the result whether your test worked or not. Mail-From Result="pass": is the indication that your test passed SPF when sending mail. See the full docs on all this here: http://www.openspf.org/Tools