PHPMailer wrong from address when receiving email - php

Question

I have this problem where when I receive an email sent from my localhost website, I get the wrong email address for the for the sender section ($mail->SetFrom($email, $name)). I get my own email address as the sender and not the one inputed in the text box on my website.
I've looked everywhere for some answers, sadly nothing worked. I've tried going on Chrome Account Settings and setting the less secure apps to ON. That didn't work.
I've tried multiple ways of setting the SetFrom email and name. NEED HELP!
<?php
$dir = __DIR__;
require_once("$dir/../PHPMailer-master/PHPMailerAutoload.php");
extract($_POST, EXTR_PREFIX_ALL, "P");
$name = $_POST['postName'];
$email = $_POST['postEmail'];
$subject = $_POST['postSubject'];
$message = $_POST['postMessage'];
$file = $_POST['postFile'];
echo "Name: ".$_POST['postName'];
echo "\n";
echo "Email: ".$_POST['postEmail'];
echo "\n";
echo "Subject: ".$_POST['postSubject'];
echo "\n";
echo "Message: ".$_POST['postMessage'];
echo "\n";
echo "File: ".$_POST['postFile'];
$mail = new PHPMailer;
$mail->IsSMTP(); // telling the class to use SMTP
$mail->Host = "mail.gmail.com"; // SMTP server
//$mail->SMTPDebug = 2; // enables SMTP debug information (for testing)
$mail->SMTPAuth = true; // enable SMTP authentication
$mail->SMTPSecure = "tls"; // sets the prefix to the servier
$mail->Host = "smtp.gmail.com"; // sets GMAIL as the SMTP server
$mail->Port = 587; // set the SMTP port for the GMAIL server
$mail->Username = "xxxx#gmail.com"; // GMAIL username
$mail->Password = "xxxx"; // GMAIL password
$mail->SetFrom($email, $name);
$mail->AddReplyTo($email, $name);
$mail->addAddress("xxxx#gmail.com", "name");
$mail->AddAttachment("$file");
$mail->Subject = "$subject";
$mail->Body = "$message";
if(!$mail->send()) {
echo 'Message could not be sent.';
echo 'Mailer Error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo;
} else {
echo 'Message has been sent';
} ?>
This is an alert I set up showing all the POST parameters sent to the my PHP script. All the POST variables are there. The only problem is the SetFrom($email, $name)
Javascript Alert with POST Parameters

Answer 1

Gmail does not allow you to set arbitrary from addresses, though you can define preset aliases.
However, you shouldn't be trying to do this anyway. Putting user-provided value in the from address is a very bad idea as your messages will fail SPF checks because it's forgery. Put your own address in the from address (as well as the to address), and put the submitter's address in a reply-to header using the addReplyTo() method. You can see this working in the contact form example provided with PHPMailer:
//Use a fixed address in your own domain as the from address
//**DO NOT** use the submitter's address here as it will be forgery
//and will cause your messages to fail SPF checks
$mail->setFrom('from#example.com', 'First Last');
//Send the message to yourself, or whoever should receive contact for submissions
$mail->addAddress('whoto#example.com', 'John Doe');
//Put the submitter's address in a reply-to header
//This will fail if the address provided is invalid,
//in which case we should ignore the whole request
if ($mail->addReplyTo($_POST['email'], $_POST['name'])) {
...