Sender Policy Framework Update — Network Internet

Sender Policy Framework Update

If you host or manage your own mail server we recommend that you start using SPF today...

Nearly all abusive e-mail messages carry fake sender addresses. The victims whose addresses are being abused often suffer from the consequences, because their reputation gets diminished and they have to disclaim liability for the abuse, or waste their time sorting out misdirected bounce messages. You probably have experienced one kind of abuse or another of your e-mail address yourself in the past, e.g. when you received an error message saying that a message allegedly sent by you could not be delivered to the recipient, although you never sent a message to that address.

Sender address forgery is a threat to users and companies alike, and it even undermines the e-mail medium as a whole because it erodes people's confidence in its reliability. That is why your bank never sends you information about your account by e-mail and keeps making a point of that fact.

To help reduce unwanted spam we have been recommending the implementation of an open standard called Sender Policy Framework (SPF)  for all our email customers that own or manage their own email servers.   SPF is simple and easy to deploy, and only requires a few extra records added to your DNS zones. These new records by default should include any host names that are approved to send email for your domain name(s). This sould include your own email servers, CleanSMTP servers, web servers, bulk email services and remote workers that send email bypassing your primary email servers.

If you subscribe to CleanSMTP or if we manage your mail servers or domain name services please contact customer for further advice about implementing your Sender Policy.  

The setup advice and deployment of SPF is a free service and is suitable for CleanSMTP users, Microsoft Exchange Servers, Lotus Domino, Novell Groupwise, Tobit Postman, Exim, FTGate Professional and other Internet mail servers.