SPF: Sender Policy Framework

SPF is an open standard whose goal is to help stop forgery of e-mail domains and some types of spam as well. SPF helps protect the envelope return path.

Why should I list my SPF record? What if I don't want to use it to fight spam on my inbound systems?
InfoTeam has begun using SPF records to verify senders. By default, InfoTeam-hosted customers also have an SPF record that lists our mail servers. Customers may request changes to their SPF record. Without an SPF record, your domain will be subject to more spam, forgeries using your domain, and the bounce messages that are the inevitable result of these forgeries.

What is SPF?
A significant majority of spam is forged. SPF allows your mail servers to easily distinguish forgeries from real mail. Importantly, SPF works before the message body is transmitted, saving you the bandwidth cost of downloading the message and the CPU cost of filtering it.

How might I be blocked by SPF?
If you are an InfoTeam-hosted customer and use an outbound (SMTP) mail server other than one at InfoTeam, be sure to notify us to update your SPF record accordingly. Failure to do so will cause many servers to rejct mail from you as being from an unauthorized mail server.

SPF Facts!

• SPF is indicated by a TXT DNS record.
• SPF is a counterpart of the MX list.
• Because SPF protects the return-path, users protected by SPF will stop getting bounces for messages they did not send.

How do I setup SPF?
Publishing SPF is easy and is done by default for InfoTeam-hosted customers. Please contact us at InfoTeam Support with any requested changes.

Better impression with SPF!
Publishing an SPF record shows a company is interested in helping stop the forgery of its own domain.

How do I find out more about SPF?
The official SPF web site can be found at http://spf.pobox.com.