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Sender ID and SPF Failures

Last updated February 2020

In tools such as Mail-Tester you will sometimes see in the Authentication section a line that reads like the following:

  "[Sender ID] example.com does not allow your server 35.xxx.xxx.xxx to use noreply@example.com"

  Sender ID is like SPF, but it checks the FROM address, not the bounce address.
  You do not have a SPF record, please add the following one to your domain example.com:

  v=spf1 a mx ip4:35.xxx.xxx.xxx ~all

These are relating to Sender-ID failures, not SPF failures. Unlike SPF, Sender-ID isn't really in widespread usage, and more importantly, it focuses on the From (sender) domain, not the bounce (Return-Path) domain.

If you look at the Source of the message (in the "Click Here To View Your Message" section), you will see that the SPF did pass:

  Received-SPF: Pass (sender SPF authorized) identity=mailfrom;
   client-ip=35.xxx.xxx.xxx; helo=mta200.spmta.com;

If you want to resolve this issue with the Sender-ID, you can do either of the following:

  1. Update the SPF record for your domain to read as follows:

        "v=spf1 include:_spf.sparkpostmail.com"

        or for SparkPost EU:

        "v=spf1 include:_spf.eu.sparkpostmail.com"

  2. Publish a proper Sender-ID record for your domain to read as follows:

        "v=spf2.0/pra include:_spf.sparkpostmail.com"

        or for SparkPost EU:

        "v=spf2.0/pra include:_spf.eu.sparkpostmail.com"
  

For more detail refer to this article at openspf.org

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