SPF=Neutral sending through gmail

Question

I'm using phpMailer on a Linode server. The DNS records are set to allow sending through the gmail mail server which is hosing my mail account [email protected]. I just added DKIM to try to get the SPF rating up. The DKIM apparently is fine but I still get SPF Neutral.

The sender set up is:

        $mail = new PHPMailer();
        $mail->isSMTP();
        $mail->SMTPKeepAlive = true;
        $mail->SMTPAuth   = true;
        $mail->SMTPSecure = "tls";                 // sets the prefix to the server
        $mail->Host       = "smtp.gmail.com";      // sets GMAIL as the SMTP server
        $mail->Port       = 587;                   // set the SMTP port
        $mail->Username   = "[email protected]";  // GMAIL username
        $mail->Password   = "*******************";            // GMAIL password
        $mail->isHTML(true); // send as HTML
        $mail->WordWrap   = 100; // set word wrap
        $mail->Sender = "[email protected]";
        $mail->addReplyTo($_SESSION['se-reply'],$_SESSION['se-from']);
        $mail->setFrom($_SESSION['se-reply'],$_SESSION['se-from']);

        $mail->DKIM_domain = "oiyc.org";
        $mail->DKIM_private = "*********/rsa.private"; //path to file on the disk.
        $mail->DKIM_selector = "mainkey";// change this to whatever you set during step 2
        $mail->DKIM_passphrase = "";
        $mail->DKIM_identity = $mail->Sender;

Here is the source received from an email sent through my linode server.

            Delivered-To: ********@gmail.com
            Received: by 10.46.25.85 with SMTP id p82csp1388830lje;
                Sun, 4 Feb 2018 11:11:56 -0800 (PST)
            X-Received: by 10.98.196.204 with SMTP id h73mr11556131pfk.143.1517771515865;
                Sun, 04 Feb 2018 11:11:55 -0800 (PST)
            ARC-Seal: i=1; a=rsa-sha256; t=1517771515; cv=none;
                d=google.com; s=arc-20160816;
                b=*****
                qrIA==
            ARC-Message-Signature: i=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=google.com; s=arc-20160816;
                h=content-transfer-encoding:mime-version:list-unsubscribe:message-id
                :subject:reply-to:to:date:from:dkim-signature
                :arc-authentication-results;
                bh=ptVvqh2PiSco0+Kb7wjBXHUijnbEm43LU4E+zStVvb0=;
                b=********
                iuTg==
            ARC-Authentication-Results: i=1; mx.google.com;
                dkim=pass [email protected] header.s=20150623 header.b=ytsz7YWm;
                spf=neutral (google.com: 209.85.220.41 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of [email protected]) [email protected]
            Return-Path: <[email protected]>
            Received: from mail-sor-f41.google.com (mail-sor-f41.google.com. [209.85.220.41])
                by mx.google.com with SMTPS id i3sor1037208pgs.91.2018.02.04.11.11.55
                for <********@gmail.com>
                (Google Transport Security);
                Sun, 04 Feb 2018 11:11:55 -0800 (PST)
            Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 209.85.220.41 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of [email protected]) client-ip=209.85.220.41;
            Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
                dkim=pass [email protected] header.s=20150623 header.b=ytsz7YWm;
                spf=neutral (google.com: 209.85.220.41 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of [email protected]) [email protected]
            DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
                d=oiyc-org.20150623.gappssmtp.com; s=20150623;
                h=from:date:to:reply-to:subject:message-id:list-unsubscribe
                :mime-version:content-transfer-encoding;
                bh=ptVvqh2PiSco0+Kb7wjBXHUijnbEm43LU4E+zStVvb0=;
                b=*********
            SsBA==
            X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
                d=1e100.net; s=20161025;
                h=x-gm-message-state:from:date:to:reply-to:subject:message-id
                :list-unsubscribe:mime-version:content-transfer-encoding;
                bh=ptVvqh2PiSco0+Kb7wjBXHUijnbEm43LU4E+zStVvb0=;
                b=*************
                r+zA==
            X-Gm-Message-State: AKwxytcQCxD/95gmJfS/DyCC4XOh8K3K+Jj9QONeHmVyCH5ebJDtxvIl tQwyBjpS9etVQopYODbtnZZ2Kw0k1Pc=
            X-Google-Smtp-Source: AH8x227kdTn+9Ee7QoJFUYDPq/ax7LmKHzsDAtCNr/5cL0MidmAB3GWuEw4RU28Zb3jl8Kx0uAnegw==
            X-Received: by 10.99.96.80 with SMTP id u77mr6305435pgb.401.1517771515191;
            Sun, 04 Feb 2018 11:11:55 -0800 (PST)
            Return-Path: <[email protected]>
            Received: from oiyc.org ([2600:3c01::f03c:91ff:fe56:5129])
                by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id m65sm14046167pfc.150.2018.02.04.11.11.54
                for <********@gmail.com>
                (version=TLS1 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA bits=128/128);
                Sun, 04 Feb 2018 11:11:54 -0800 (PST)
            From: Bob Brunius <[email protected]>
            X-Google-Original-From: Bob Brunius <********@gmail.com>
            Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2018 11:11:53 -0800
            To: ********@gmail.com
            Reply-To: Bob Brunius <********@gmail.com>
            Subject: A different sort of test 123d
            Message-ID: <[email protected]>
            X-Mailer: PHPMailer 6.0.3 (https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer)
            List-Unsubscribe: <[email protected]>, <https://oiyc.org/membershipDatabaseForms/unsubscribe.php?email=********@gmail.com&member=242>
            MIME-Version: 1.0
            Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="b1_MR3sDgtyN4siuc2vYCZLxL34VuLFlexvK0WbbcEH7FA"
            Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

            --b1_MR3sDgtyN4siuc2vYCZLxL34VuLFlexvK0WbbcEH7FA
            Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

            Hello 12345678-abcd

            --b1_MR3sDgtyN4siuc2vYCZLxL34VuLFlexvK0WbbcEH7FA
            Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii

            <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
            <html>
            <body>
            Hello 12345678-abcd
            </body>
            </html>
            --b1_MR3sDgtyN4siuc2vYCZLxL34VuLFlexvK0WbbcEH7FA--

Answer 1

Currently your SPF record is published in your DNS as...

"v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:oiyc.org ~all"

which has an include:oiyc.org recursively referencing itself. This is technically incorrect, but strangely may work if the preceding mechanism include:_spf.google.com is satisfied and returns a result to the SPF query. Therafter the include:oiyc.org mechanism will cause the lookup to fail, so the ~all mechanism would never be processed.

The include: mechanism is intended to reference an externally published set of SPF details, usually at a different domain.

I suspect that you intended to reference the IP address of your own domain, presumably defined in DNS as an A record for the bare domain name, in which case you would us the mechanism a:oiyc.org which can itself be shortened to just a

So your resulting TXT record might be something like...

"v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com a ~all"

Answer 2

There is no connection between using DKIM and SPF.

From the log:

Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 209.85.220.41 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of [email protected]) client-ip=209.85.220.41;

When checking for the SPF record, this happens:

$ host -t TXT oiyc.org
oiyc.org has no TXT record

This means, you haven't set up any SPF rules. Therefore, there cannot be a SPF check. As the message states, there is no reason to have anything other than neutral.

This also applies to ARC-Authentication-Results and Authentication-Results headers.

Answer 3

The SPF that was supposed to add for the current IP listed is

@ TXT "v=spf1 a ip4:209.85.220.41 ~all"

visit this link to create and the SPF : https://mxtoolbox.com/SPFRecordGenerator.aspx