GMail rejecting my emails DKIM did not pass and SPF did not pass

[Issonian]

Hello,

I'm new to all this stuff and my technical expertise does not cover this area, so all the answers I'm looking at are gobbledegook. I have a btinternet.com email address and so does my wife (a different address). Just lately some of my wife's emails to long-established friends with gmail addresses are getting bounced by Google, referencing the need to implement a bunch of protocols like SPF and DKIM. How are we, as consumer customers, supposed to know how to do this?

I can see that someone has found a solution but there is no detail on exactly what to do. Would someone be kind enough to provide a step by step guide in plain English, please? The BT website only has information for professional, bulk-emailing customers. I can't understand how Google can stick this requirement on people who may well be pensioners like ourselves.

For myself, I have not yet had any emails rejected and my wife only has emails to some, not all, gmail friends rejected - why is this? I will add that, like someone else on this forum, we have recenly swapped out an old BT router for an up-to-date EE router, but why should this matter? Why would BT/EE not protect us from problens like this?

I really hope someone can help.

Thanks - Hoylander

[licquorice]

I have moved your post to start your own thread as it is a totally different problem to the thread you posted on.

I don't know why your mails are being bounced, but if you are using btinternet email, SPF and DKIM credentials are handled by BT, they are not user configurable.

[gg30340]

The first thing to try is to turn off your EE router for about half an hour and when you turn it back on it should be issued a different IP address and connected to a different BTMail server which may solve the problem.

If that does not help and the emails are still being rejected it would appear to be a gmail issue rather than a BT one.

As already stated by @licquorice the error that gmail gave regarding SPF etc can not be changed by the user as they are "locked" in by BT and are exactly the same as those used by your BTMail account and millions of other BTMail users.

You should try sending an email from your BTMail account and if that gets through then that "error" from gmail can obviously not be the problem.

You should ask the recipients of her emails if they could check that they have not accidentally added her email address to their "blocked senders" list.

This can be done in the gmail settings which are found by them clicking on the cog icon at the top right hand side of the gmail page then clicking on "see all settings" then clicking on "Filters and Blocked Addresses". If they find her email address there they should select it then click "Delete".

If they do not find her email address in the blocked senders list they should report this to the gmail email team and ask them to establish why her emails are being rejected.

[Issonian]

Many thanks for your advice, which I will follow. Regarding sending an email to my wife's friend myself, I did that yesterday and it got through with no problem. I'm glad to read that BT consumer customers are already set up for DKIM, etc, as I was wondering how I was going to get BT's attention to do it just for my wife.

So, I will switch off the router today and report back in a while.

Hoylander

[Issonian]

Regarding the tests you proposed, I shut down the new router for a good while and then restarted it. My wife then sent an enail to one of her friends, which was still rejected. The message she got back was :

These recipients of your message have been processed by the mail server:
xxx.zzz@gmail.com; Failed; 5.3.0 (other or undefined mail system status)

Remote MTA gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com: network error

- SMTP protocol diagnostic: 550-5.7.26 Your email has been blocked because the sender is unauthenticated.\r\n550-5.7.26 Gmail requires all senders to authenticate with either SPF or DKIM.\r\n550-5.7.26 \r\n550-5.7.26 Authentication results:\r\n550-5.7.26 DKIM = did not pass\r\n550-5.7.26 SPF [icloud.com] with ip: [65.20.50.127] = did not pass\r\n550-5.7.26 \r\n550-5.7.26 For instructions on setting up authentication, go to\r\n550 5.7.26 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#authentication 5b1f17b1804b1-43f206682f8si887968

Reporting-MTA: dns; btprdrgo005.btinternet.com
Received-from-MTA: dns; smtpclient.apple (86.156.222.157)
Arrival-Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2025 19:09:48 +0100

Final-Recipient: rfc822; xxx.zzz@gmail.com
Action: Failed
Status: 5.3.0 (other or undefined mail system status)
Remote-MTA: dns; gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com

From: My.Wife <aaa.bbb@icloud.com>
Subject: Test email
Date: 14 April 2025 at 19:09:38 BST
To: XXX ZZZ <xxx.zzz@gmail.com>

You will see that I have changed the identities of the parties to the email. Based on your earlier advice, I guess this is an incorrect reason from Google. I will now send my wife's friend your advice on checking her settings for blocked users.

Regards,

Hoylander

[licquorice · Accepted solution]

But your wife isn't sending from a btinternet email address, she is sending from an iCloud address.

[Issonian]

Oh heck.  I’m sure she was using her btinternet address when all this started, at least, that’s definitely what she told me. I’m sorry I did not spot the iCloud address in this latest exchange. I’d better go and get a better grip on all the facts. It would be extremely unlikely that she would be getting rejects from both of her addresses. 

Regards,

Hoylander

[Issonian]

We definitely have a very strange problem. Emails from BOTH of my wife's email addresses (xxx.zzz@btinternet.com and xxx.zzz@icloud.com) are being rejected by Google, ostensibly for failed authentication reasons, but only to a couple of addressees. My own messages get through fine.

I have no idea how to trouble-shoot this. If it's to do with my wife's IP address, I tried to solve this by shutting down the new router and restarting it, but it made no difference. As I said, I will ask one of the recipients if she has accidentally blocked my wife's emails, but it's highly unlikely that she would have blocked both addresses.

Rergards,

Hoylander

[licquorice]

I suspect whatever email client she is using has been misconfigured somehow.

Possibly trying to send using the wrong SMTP server for the account.

[Issonian]

Thanks for the tip about the wrong SMTP server. I checked my wife's iCloud account and the outgoing server was set to btinternet instead of iCloud, so I corrected it. Her BT email account was correctly configured.

I then sent a test message to one of her friends from her iCloud account and so far (after 20 minutes) have had no reject message from Google. The friend has yet to read the email and confirm receipt.

I have now sent a test message to the friend from my wife's BT account and that hasn't bounced either (yet). If the iCloud account is now working properly, it's not obvious to me why that should have fixed the BT account as well.

Anyway, fingers crossed, and I'll let you know the outcome if the two emails got through OK.

Regards,

Hoylander