Mail is being reported from private addresses

What it means

N sources use addresses that cannot be routed on the internet, private, loopback or link-local ranges. Something inside a network is injecting mail and the reporting path is recording the internal hop instead of the public one.

How to fix it

Find the relay behind those addresses. Its public sending IP is the one that has to be in your SPF record, and it is not in these reports.

Check your own domain

This page describes the condition. To find out whether your domain has it, run the RUA test or the full checkup, which examines every record at once.

Understand it properly

This page covers one condition. For the whole picture, The DMARC guide, including how reporting works, or start at the Health Library.

Where this comes from

We judge this against RFC 9990 section 3.1.1. Every finding on this site cites the specification behind it so you can check the work rather than take our word for it.

Other RUA conditions

• You are ready to turn enforcement on
• Some of this is forwarded mail, not an attack
• Somebody is sending as you, and it is being delivered
• Unauthenticated mail is getting past your policy
• Your policy stopped forged mail
• Your own mail is failing authentication