How to add an SPF record

Big Dan

EQ Forum Moderator
Hey Folks,

I manage a couple of my own servers and have been on a few black lists from time to time.. I don't know why all that sends mail on through my servers are vBulletin, Wordpress, and myBB. However it's been recommended that I add an SPF record. I understand the concept behind it but don't know how to add one.. I'm on your typical CentOS/cPanel servers. Any help would be appreciated

Thanks,
Dan
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
What does an SPF record do? An SPF record lets mail servers know what sources you are expecting to be sending e-mail as your domain. This allows those mail servers to reject mail from your domain that is coming from unexpected places. For example, if you say all mail for your-domain.com should come from smtp.your-domain.com, but then a spammer tries to send mail as your domain name from their mail server, it will get rejected.

To create an SPF Record use the SPF Wizard | Tool to create SPF records to generate an SPF record for your domain. Once you have the record, you'll need to add a record to your DNS zone file with your DNS Hosting company. Create a TXT record for your domain, and enter the line given to you by the SPF Wizard as the value for the TXT record.

Creating an SPF record is not likely to help you with your blacklist issues though. Please start another thread in the mail server support forum that has the ip address of your mail server, and any error messages that you have so we can help you with fixing your blacklist issues
 
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EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
FYI - The answers above are getting out of date now.

When SPF was first available it used TXT records in DNS.

Now that there is an SPF RR type in DNS that's more widely available it's recommended to create an actual SPF record in addition to a TXT record.

For now the old v=spf1 record types can still be done in TXT records.
 
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Big Dan

EQ Forum Moderator
I'm a fairly geeky guy but you might as well be speaking Chinese to me.:rofl:
 
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EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
3.1.1. DNS Resource Record Types

This document defines a new DNS RR of type SPF, code 99. The format
of this type is identical to the TXT RR [RFC1035]. For either type,
the character content of the record is encoded as [US-ASCII].

It is recognized that the current practice (using a TXT record) is
not optimal, but it is necessary because there are a number of DNS
server and resolver implementations in common use that cannot handle
the new RR type. The two-record-type scheme provides a forward path
to the better solution of using an RR type reserved for this purpose.

An SPF-compliant domain name SHOULD have SPF records of both RR
types. A compliant domain name MUST have a record of at least one
type. If a domain has records of both types, they MUST have
identical content. For example, instead of publishing just one
record as in Section 3.1 above, it is better to publish:

example.com. IN TXT "v=spf1 +mx a:colo.example.com/28 -all"
example.com. IN SPF "v=spf1 +mx a:colo.example.com/28 -all"

Example RRs in this document are shown with the TXT record type;
however, they could be published with the SPF type or with both
types.
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
A couple more years later and the answer changed again.

Don't worry about the SPF RR type anymore, the original method of placing SPF records within a TXT record is most correct again.
 
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