A DMARC aggregate report which I received reads (irrelevant pieces removed, domains changed): <record> <row> <policy_evaluated> <disposition>none</disposition> <dkim>pass</dkim> <spf>fail</spf> </policy_evaluated> </row> <auth_results> <dkim> <domain>mail-provider.com</domain> <result>pass</result> </dkim> <spf> <domain>subdomain.mail-provider.com</domain> <result>pass</result> </spf> </auth_results> </record> I do not understand why evaluated DMARC policy is `fail` with respect to SPF. As `<auth_results>` show, SPF by itself validates. AFAIK, in this case the DMARC failure can be only caused by [passed SPF identity not being identity-aligned according to DMARC policy][1]. But how could it happen in my case? The DMARC RFC 7489 [reads][2]: > Identifier Alignment: When the domain in the RFC5322.From address > matches a domain validated by SPF or DKIM (or both), it has > Identifier Alignment. * Domain in the "From:" field is `mycompany.com`. * SPF record for `mycompany.com` is `include:mail-provider.com`. * SPF record for `mail-provider.com` contains a range of IP addresses they use to send mail from. The mail has arrived from an address in that range. * DMARC policy for `mycompany.com` does not require "strict" alignment for SPF. I thought that the "passed SPF identity" in this case is `mail-provider.com`, for DMARC to pass it needs to align with `subdomain.mail-provider.com`, and it does so in "relaxed" mode. What am I missing? [1]: https://security.stackexchange.com/a/171341/50647 [2]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7489#page-8