Issue Delivery Status Notifications put into spam by DMARC

[Jens Johansson]

Server operating system version

CloudLinux 8.10

Plesk version and microupdate number

18.0.72 #2

Hi,

we got a problem with mail Delivery Status Notifications (DSN) sent from MAILER-DAEMON@<hostname>. Those reports are classified as spam by DMARC rules.

This problem arises when a customer sends an email to another customer on the same server and requests a Delivery Status Notification for said email. The server then creats the notification and fails to look up the SPF with message "SPF record was not found in Authentication-Results". But there is a valid SPF record for the hostname domain. The hostname domain is acualiy a subdomain with "v=spf1 a -all" and the parrent domain has a DMARC with policy quarantine. So the Delivery Status Notification is put into the spam folder by the server, because of the DMARC rule. But this should not happen for two reasons. First there is a vaild SPF which permits the server/hostname as sender. And second I added the hostname domain to be ignored by DMACR checking in the file /etc/psa/dmarc.conf

Am I missing something or could this be a bug?

 

[LRLD]

You need to add an SPF record for the hostname, as well as the domain.
If your hostname is mail.domain.tld you need to create a new SPF record for mail subdomain. So you end up with two SPF records. Eg...

domain.tld v=spf1 a mx -all
mail.domain.tld v=spf1 a mx -all

I hope that helps.