Sender Policy Framework (SPF)

0Harry • 16th Feb 2010 • Systems Administration • dns, email, exim, spf

Recently I have been receiving email bounces suggesting that I’ve been attempting to send people emails as it’s being signed with one of my domains… Obviously this isn’t me sending it out!

To resolve this issue I’ve implemented SPF (sender policy framework) which will verify that the email being sent is from a trusted server (being either my webmail server, home or office).

If you’re able to manage the DNS records for your domain you can add the following “TXT” record for “@”:

v=spf1 a mx ip4:x.x.x.x ~all

Where x.x.x.x is your mail server, web server, etc, etc. You can add multiple IP addresses by simply adding another “ip4: y.y.y.y”.

v=spf1 a mx ip4:x.x.x.x ip4:y.y.y.y ~all

Example:

v=spf1 a mx ip4:82.71.110.139 ip4:217.112.87.134 ~all