I get SPF_SOFTFAIL with Received-SPF: pass header

Rainbow Dash

New Member
Mar 6, 2025
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My PMG does not receive incoming mail directly. It gets the mail from another MX that does relay all mail to the PMG. This other MX does the SPF check on all incoming mail.
This check does PASS:

Code:
Received-SPF: pass (posteo.de: 185.67.36.65 is authorized to use 'XXXX@posteo.de' in 'mfrom' identity (mechanism 'ip4:185.67.36.0/23' matched)) receiver=mx.mydomain.tld; identity=mailfrom; envelope-from="XXXX@posteo.de"; helo=mout01.posteo.de; client-ip=185.67.36.65

There is only that one "Received-SPF:" entry in the entire header.

The SPF check on the PMG is disabled.

But spamassassin's SPF check does fail. It does ignore the Received-SPF header and does the SPF lookup itself with the IP of the receiving internal relay and fails.

Code:
SPF_SOFTFAIL            0.972 SPF: sender does not match SPF record (softfail)

From the spamassassin docs:
ignore_received_spf_header (0|1) (default: 0)
By default, to avoid unnecessary DNS lookups, the plugin will try to use the SPF results found in any Received-SPF headers it finds in the message that could only have been added by an internal relay.

ignore_received_spf_header is NOT set to 1