Creating SPF Records
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Last Updated:
October 1, 2008 11:31 AM
Sender Policy Framework (SPF) allows you to explicitly state which servers are and are not allowed to send email that looks to be from your domain. Receiving mail servers check the SPF Record entry when receiving email from the domain, and if the sending server does not match entries in the SPF record, the email is assumed to be unauthorized.
To Create an SPF Record
- Log in to your Account Manager.
- In the My Products section, click Domain Manager.
- Click the name of the domain you want to edit.
- Click Total DNS Control and MX Records.
- In the TXT (Text) section, click Add New SPF Record.
- From the This domain sends mail through list, select one of the following options:
- Us only
- Sends email only through us.
- Us and an ISP
- Sends email using us and your ISP.
- An ISP or other provider
- Sends email using your ISP or another mail provider.
- No email is sent from this domain
- Does not send email using this domain.
- On the Inbound tab, select All Inbound Servers May Send Mail to allow incoming email sent from any mail servers or do one or both of the following:
- Select individual servers
- Specify the mail servers from which you want to allow incoming email.
- Enter Additional MX Addresses
- Enter the MX addresses (mail servers) from which you want to allow incoming email.
- On the Outbound tab, if the IP addresses listed in your A records for your domain are also outbound mail servers, select All Addresses in A Records. Optionally, you can enter additional A Records for outbound mail servers.
- On the PTR tab, select Include PTR to allow servers based on your domain to send email. Optionally, you can enter additional PTR addresses.
NOTE: A PTR refers to reverse DNS records. In an SPF record, including the PTR tells the receiving SMTP server to complete a reverse DNS lookup on the sending server's IP address and looks for a match in the response. If you enter additional PTR addresses, responses ending in those domains are considered valid matches.
- On the Outsourced tab, if mail from your domain is sent through an ISP or other third party server, enter the third party domains you are using.
- (Optional) To prevent the SPF Record from automatically validating servers not specifically listed, select Exclude all hosts not specified here.
- Click OK.
- On the SPF Wizard Step 3 screen, click OK to save the SPF record string as a TXT record.
NOTE: Clicking the Edit button takes you to the first screen in the record.