{"id":1157,"date":"2017-06-20T07:52:09","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T11:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pair.com\/support\/kb\/?p=1157"},"modified":"2023-06-22T08:35:53","modified_gmt":"2023-06-22T12:35:53","slug":"what-is-an-spf","status":"publish","type":"ht_kb","link":"https:\/\/www.pair.com\/support\/kb\/what-is-an-spf\/","title":{"rendered":"What is an SPF Record?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shared<\/p><\/a>

VPS<\/p><\/a>

Dedicated<\/p><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

SPF means \u201cSender Policy Framework.\u201d It is a list of IP addresses that are allowed to send emails for a specific domain. This helps servers weed out spam and phishing emails who try to disguise themselves as addresses from a reputable domain. <\/span><\/p>\n

Spammers sometimes try to fake the <\/span>sent from<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>reply<\/span><\/i> addresses to make it look like the emails come from a reputable address. If you checked the header, however, you would see they actually originate from a spamming address. Spammers do this to misdirect complaints and avoid emails bouncing. <\/span><\/p>\n

Creating an SPF record helps fend off these spammers who would use your domain as a cover to send spam or who try to send the spam to you. The SPF record will be checked by other servers and, when they discover spam disguised as your domain or you discover spam disguised as their's, the server will reject it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not only is SPF a good way to keep spam out of your inbox, it can also help ensure email delivery. Some email services will automatically reject emails with no SPF record. Combat this by enabling an SPF configuration on your account. Pair Networks offers pre-configured SPF records for <\/span>our mailboxes<\/span><\/a> so it\u2019s easy for you to get SPF protection, without building an SPF record from the ground up. <\/span>Find out more about our pre-configured SPF records here<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re comfortable with DNS records, <\/span>you can create your own SPF record<\/span><\/a> or read the rest of this article for in-depth information about SPF records.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you would like to have all incoming mail checked by SPF, visit our Blocking Junk Mail with SPF<\/a> article.<\/span>
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The Details<\/h3>\n

An SPF record is a TXT record stored in the DNS zone file. A TXT record can contain free-form or formatted text. However, an SPF record is written in a specific format. <\/span><\/p>\n

An SPF entry will look like this:<\/p>\n

v=spf1 ip4:10.20.20.0\/24 ip4:10.10.10.21 -all<\/span><\/pre>\n

\nThe version number tag, <\/span>v=spf1<\/b>, begins each SPF record. This particular version works best for our purposes since it allows the user to identify their mail server and enables receiving servers to check incoming mail against the valid mail server.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
Mechanism<\/h3>\n
After the version tag comes the \u201cmechanism.\u201d The mechanism is what method you are using to identify the host(s). Here is a full list of mechanisms:<\/span><\/p>\n