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Comments on How do I stop Gmail from silently dropping legitimate email?
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How do I stop Gmail from silently dropping legitimate email?
I have a domain and now use it for my primary email address. In addition to depositing mail in that mailbox, this address also currently forwards to my Gmail account. (Yes I know, and I want to relocate 20+ years of saved email, but not today.) I set up the forwarding using the CPanel "Forwarders" page.
I've known for a while that Gmail sometimes silently drops incoming email -- it doesn't bounce or go to the spam folder; it just disappears. The rules by which Gmail decides to do that are opaque. I get a lot of actual spam and malware delivered to my spam folder, too, so it doesn't seem to be that Gmail is hyper-aggressive.
In recent weeks I have noticed an increase in legitimate email not arriving at Gmail. This includes messages sent directly to me (not mailing lists), sometimes in response to messages I sent, and includes senders I have explicitly whitelisted with Gmail. Most mail gets through; some gets silently dropped, and I can't characterize it yet -- I haven't seen any unique traits in the affected messages.
I used https://www.mail-tester.com to check that DMARC, DKIM, SPF, etc from my domain are fine; it reports 10/10 (authenticated, not blocklisted, passes SpamAssassin). I checked the "email deliverability" report on CPanel and it looks fine. CPanel's "track delivery" shows no failures. (I know that the missing Gmail messages wouldn't show up here, as Gmail is silently swallowing them, but I checked to see if anything else is showing up there.)
Long-term I want to stop using Gmail, but: (1) I'm not there yet and (2) I don't know if Gmail is dropping my messages to other Gmail users. So I'd like to figure out what's going wrong here. How can I debug (and ideally fix) this problem?
Here are the headers from a message that arrived -- from a Gmail address, for extra irony -- at my domain, but did not subsequently arrive at my Gmail address after forwarding. My reply, sent from my domain, did arrive at the recipient's Gmail address, interestingly (not all messages get blackholed).
("Redacted", "mydomain", and "my-hosting-provider" are my redactions.)
Return-Path:
Delivered-To: ME@MYDOMAIN.org
Received: from redacted.my-hosting-provider.com
by redacted.my-hosting-provider.com with LMTP
id YAYMLtaa82cvqQAAflZDjA
(envelope-from )
for ; Mon, 07 Apr 2025 04:28:54 -0500
Return-path:
Envelope-to: ME@MYDOMAIN.org
Delivery-date: Mon, 07 Apr 2025 04:28:54 -0500
Received: from mail-qt1-f175.google.com ([209.85.160.175]:52619)
by redacted.my-hosting-provider.com with esmtps (TLS1.2) tls TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
(Exim 4.98.1)
(envelope-from )
id 1u1imd-00000000Tfi-3sXU
for ME@MYDOMAIN.org;
Mon, 07 Apr 2025 04:28:54 -0500
Received: by mail-qt1-f175.google.com with SMTP id d75a77b69052e-4774ce422easo42549131cf.1
for ; Mon, 07 Apr 2025 02:28:47 -0700 (PDT)
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
d=gmail.com; s=20230601; t=1744018125; x=1744622925; darn=MYDOMAIN.org;
h=to:in-reply-to:references:message-id:date:subject:mime-version
:content-transfer-encoding:from:from:to:cc:subject:date:message-id
:reply-to;
bh=IHdxC90FwlDs+Q67J6fS6xs+eyD781SUtdFdBhig2Bs=;
b=MzMWgTjvHCCypK8VmN/+97Q4Nm7eXng6xFMuj3bF2s+LvykoQix2k000ftAH+cmEln
OVbiZJf1J/ZW60MsVLG9pDj0r+F/hA/J9A3IzSEj1qvetxn3wmvEvdO1REw0I9x+6VzU
haAxog9XMAg/f9rsiM9gBlm6MamDJZ5VKv9D8h5Yh/BdXiJDZg3tj9wv1bmQF7xIywqN
8UbhT23Wggeifw9OStwjYUL+EaPNC1zBaOclq/ODPHhWZlHb19vRlHEwP8OJ/Yl5AlvW
rv8w/9Fj0J+CnTn8cXL96DjZWOJrz1EwOCSKyWwdMn1h2f6kYAcO5mFJ/rfQkk6tcrx2
iWww==
X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
d=1e100.net; s=20230601; t=1744018125; x=1744622925;
h=to:in-reply-to:references:message-id:date:subject:mime-version
:content-transfer-encoding:from:x-gm-message-state:from:to:cc
:subject:date:message-id:reply-to;
bh=IHdxC90FwlDs+Q67J6fS6xs+eyD781SUtdFdBhig2Bs=;
b=xVaaObcfBWBfgoRVDez4XLQac8QAKALo9VZG9TY5D9iktoyQwUFcu0TOpvd+ig+DYz
Ttd6xlJRqjPO95z45WnD5itin4i6Ta9VIPWCwaR7MGmsl4IWMYhpM7DX3IPpqB4a9J9g
dTdZMalEsJcF/3QXjKJnObVjGC5r2Rk/MwdaIIrN00GiCKtmDfviEaiQa72DODTeEmBd
aUWIKbfnEmrelljFLUFjUYagrD4FAsM1qLWhq+8h2/MB4WZB2H+SenoLV1riaL1aUPWS
cguJmtNzXBgkMh/VaOUKqYW5q6MJVt7Iz5mFqLVgi4GeHtYwcvAm0djOGPEWtEnzQ0ic
bIcA==
X-Gm-Message-State: AOJu0YzFSePwLdVEc/SKlR6yDuJpDxfylifDtc3kT9+z5U387/vFUtlS
PLc8cMVutvoGXsJYgZQDELwZBwVoydRvcrreVV410o3IyTWMadleMJy4vg==
X-Gm-Gg: ASbGncsMd7qWzv3ztjyZgdMbQ0cKf1wfPVj5tq6gIkQDg8/JVOcOmbEr1e4ZYTr/5fj
O/vg1ewgB/rdWyVSwyfLSQMXwUIOk4CvZAQ9LKZMKGhZjCeysSpqhNRL1wX+F+9lxjnz+EuqV/u
V/VRqW+eGnjzGgt2L3Kk9eEff3aHF3K0qLZGBXNGwewBus0Oezq4P9S8EdP0PRETTUECssq6yez
GziCBE/0Me1YWm/nE6GjOPgMe8BNgwhohw2pibifs/VvJbEdbd6tT+gVYSO48NBdwvdFi5xsna1
f9IAGScSu57H+usSk0evSFhFn3X5+Sp5VkPj6njd+06v3y1z/OBAOs51NSLQ89JMwRNJ6mdZsqL
EewL6h3BM
X-Google-Smtp-Source: AGHT+IG2GXTEaB1h8KsYF0VF3tCOWKpa1lzG+ARD00XDPGNAEcD8n47GtZtfzhlduMGqzU+9BT5Hbg==
X-Received: by 2002:ac8:5acc:0:b0:477:41e5:cb8d with SMTP id d75a77b69052e-479249bf9d1mr175485691cf.44.1744018125372;
Mon, 07 Apr 2025 02:28:45 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from smtpclient.apple ([2600:4041:d0:1300:480e:2e72:7af8:9248])
by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id d75a77b69052e-4791b057e6csm57759751cf.13.2025.04.07.02.28.44
for
(version=TLS1_3 cipher=TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 bits=128/128);
Mon, 07 Apr 2025 02:28:44 -0700 (PDT)
From: Redacted
X-Google-Original-From: Redacted
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Mime-Version: 1.0 (1.0)
Subject: Re: recipe
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2025 05:28:33 -0400
Message-Id: <1AD5A4C5-B698-46B8-BD4C-7200813FDCB0@gmail.com>
References:
In-Reply-To:
To: ME@MYDOMAIN.org
X-Mailer: iPad Mail (22D82)
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.8
X-Spam-Score: -17
X-Spam-Bar: -
X-Ham-Report: Spam detection software, running on the system "redacted.my-hosting-provider.com",
has NOT identified this incoming email as spam. The original
message has been attached to this so you can view it or label
similar future email. If you have any questions, see
root\@localhost for details.
Content preview: REDACTED
Content analysis details: (-1.8 points, 5.0 required)
pts rule name description
---- ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------
-1.9 BAYES_00 BODY: Bayes spam probability is 0 to 1%
[score: 0.0000]
0.0 RCVD_IN_VALIDITY_CERTIFIED_BLOCKED RBL: ADMINISTRATOR NOTICE:
The query to Validity was blocked. See
https://knowledge.validity.com/hc/en-us/articles/20961730681243
for more information.
[209.85.160.175 listed in sa-accredit.habeas.com]
0.0 RCVD_IN_VALIDITY_RPBL_BLOCKED RBL: ADMINISTRATOR NOTICE: The
query to Validity was blocked. See
https://knowledge.validity.com/hc/en-us/articles/20961730681243
for more information.
[209.85.160.175 listed in bl.score.senderscore.com]
0.2 FREEMAIL_ENVFROM_END_DIGIT Envelope-from freemail username ends
in digit
[REDACTED[at]gmail.com]
-0.0 SPF_PASS SPF: sender matches SPF record
0.0 FREEMAIL_FROM Sender email is commonly abused enduser mail
provider
[REDACTED[at]gmail.com]
-0.1 DKIM_VALID_EF Message has a valid DKIM or DK signature from
envelope-from domain
-0.1 DKIM_VALID Message has at least one valid DKIM or DK signature
-0.1 DKIM_VALID_AU Message has a valid DKIM or DK signature from
author's domain
0.1 DKIM_SIGNED Message has a DKIM or DK signature, not necessarily
valid
X-Spam-Flag: NO
(Message body redacted)
Post
Google is notorious for being very picky, having significant false positives, and not caring.
Most likely they aren't discarding these mail messages, but refusing to accept them in the first place. This can happen easily when the sender doesn't have all that latest anti-spam technology turned on at their end, like DKIM, SPF, etc.
There are still a lot of old mail servers out there. Google is a big organization and has the ability to jump on the latest technology quickly. Small companies with their own mail server (for various reasons) don't know much about these things and don't want to spend time being mail server administrators, so just let them run.
For quite a while, mail from my domain to gmail would sometimes get to a recipient, sometimes not. Mail to all other domains seemed to work normally. Sometimes, but now always, I'd get a bounce message from gmail. I had many things to do, so this didn't get much attention. Real companies don't use gmail, so only message to a few select individuals weren't getting thru. Most of the time, it was more to their advantage than mine to receive mail I sent. I developed the attitude "Screw this, you're the one who picked a bad mail service".
Eventually I looked into it and found that one of those settings (SPF ?) for my domain wasn't right or properly turned on. After fixing that, gmail seems to be accepting all my mail now.
After the next new anti-spam technology emerges and gmail gets uppity again, this will probably happen all over.
So, the answer is this is probably due to lagging technology by the sender together with an overly-aggressive and holier-than-thou attitude by Google. There is probably nothing you can do about it other than not use gmail.
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