Emails to xxxx@gmail.com from FREENETNAME account being rejected

[#1]

I've had been using my FREENETNAME email for years, now on Win11 and Outlook 2010; emails I send to accounts of the type xxxx@gmail.com have had intermittent success over the last few weeks, a rejection message often results but resending worked eventually, but now always results in rejection. I get a rejection email message back:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.
Delivery to the following recipients failed permanently:
* xxxx@gmail.com
Reason: A message that you sent to the following recipient could not be delivered due to a permanent error. ** The remote server ?? responded with: ** xxxx@gmail.com ??:?? This message was created automatically by mail delivery software on the server .

There is an attached details.txt in the rejection email that contains:

Reporting-MTA: dns; avasout-peh-001 [84.93.238.87]
Received-From-MTA: dns; KenCottage [213.1.11.184]
Arrival-Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2023 20:05:55 +0100
Final-recipient: rfc822; xxxx@gmail.com
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550-5.7.26 This mail is unauthenticated, which poses a security risk to the
Last-attempt-Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2023 20:05:56 +0100

Sending to anything other than a @gmail.com works fine, and I can receive emails from those @gmail.com accounts OK. In Outlook the outgoing Server (SMTP) is set to require authentication and use same settings as incoming mail server, nothing fancy here as I wouldn't know how to!

Is there a fix for FREENETNAME accounts please?

[#2]

Unfortunately no.

Gmail is being bloody minded in imposing non-mandatory RFCs on third party email services where the RECEIVING Gmail account is a free one.  If you were sending an email to a paid for Gmail account, you would have no problems.

Gmail does not apply these checks all of the time which is why your experience is random.

The non-mandatory RFCs are SPF and DKIM, neither of which are or will be implemented on the freenetname vISP email service in the foreseeable future.

For @account.plus.com users DKIM has been implemented.

For own domains hosted on Plusnet, SPF can be implemented by an undocumented facility ...

Configuring SPF on hosted domains

Some email service providers (notably Gmail) have mandated the SPF & DKIM non-mandatory RFCs on other email providers, such as Plusnet. This can bring about significant difficulty when attempting to send emails from one's own domain name (e.g. me@mydomain.me.uk) to 'gmail.com addresses.

SPF configuration is facilitated by the addition of a TXT record in the domain's DNS settings. Plusnet's DNS configuration tool for hosted domains does not permit the creation of TXT records. However, there is an unsupported "facilitation" which will create an SPF record for a hosted domain.

On the basis that your account ALREADY has a hosted domain, go to Manage Account -> Manage Your Domains -> Configure domain name ... and create an "Additional DNS records (Advanced)" as follows...

For the avoidance of doubt: leave the left side blank, exactly as shown.

[#3]

@Townman thanks for this but us ex FREENETNAME customers don’t have that level of admin access. I have to log onto the Madasafish admin which is pretty limited and has no Domain admin unless there is a Plus.net page I can do this on?

[#4]

No Plusnet space and MAAF space are separate.

Since that post it has transpired that SPF records are configured for madasafish.com email users.

Other domains will need some research via MXtools.

[#5]

Sorry,  been busy with work  so only just getting around to following up on your reply @Townman but thanks for replying.

Forgive me for any ignorance but are you saying that the records should already be configured for madasafish.com email users?

Although I’m originally a Freenetname customer, my mail routes through madasafish servers. It doesn’t work on them either to gmail addresses.

[#6]

I think what Townman means is that the native Madasafish type of email addresses (for example, in your case username@freenetname.co.uk) have SPF records configured. However, domains hosted on a Madasafish/Freenetname account don’t, and there’s no configurable domain control panel for you to add MX records like you can with Plusnet.

[#7]

I did!

Thank you for the clarification and the back-fill here.

Non-Plusnet stuff is not quite so clear as I have not been a user of that space.  Was not entirely clear that the MAAF brands allowed personal domain names.  Old dog, new trick learnt!