spf 15

April 17, 2006 6:54 AM

SPF, gmail and my own domain.

I'd like some assistance in properly getting spf set up for my domain. I have creativemethod.com (registered through godaddy.com) that I send mail from, often using gmail (set up to look like it's sending via creativemethod.com). It appears that I can send the same message via the gmail interface, one sent from [e-mail] and the other sent email at creativemethod dot com, and to certain email addresses, only the gmail one will get there. I've also been getting bounced messages from a spammer pretending to use my domain to send mail. I want to set up spf to see if this helps, but I'm not sure what to put in the spf wizard at http://www.openspf.org/wizard.html. Thanks!

posted by striker to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Can you limit yourself to sending your mail from just one server? And is that server the same one you use to receive mail? I'm a little confused about that.

I can never remember how SPF records work exactly, but if you answered yes to both questions above, this is what works for me.

creativemethod.com IN TXT "v=spf1 mx"
mail.creativemethod.com IN TXT "v=spf1 a -all"

The first line says, 'allow mail only from mailservers listed in DNS for my domain' (that's what the "mx" means.)

I'm not precisely sure what the second line does. I'm guessing it means "use only the A record for this server: nothing else is allowed to send." I'm not 100% sure anymore, and the wizard doesn't mention this usage, so I'm not sure you need it.
posted by Malor at 7:27 AM on April 17, 2006

I've done this for my domain it's easy.

In that wizard page you mention, near the bottom there is a section listed as:

Could mail from creativemethod.com originate through
servers belonging to some other domain?
If you send mail through your ISP's servers, and the ISP has published an SPF record, name the ISP here.

Well, just put 'gmail.com' into that box on the right there. That informs any SPF compatiable mail server to query gmails spf record also after querying yours to get ip addresses that gmail sends mail from and to include those in your spf record also.
posted by goo at 7:39 AM on April 17, 2006

Any helpful advice for modifying this easily in godaddy? I've got an email out to them now. Thanks all.
posted by striker at 9:06 AM on April 17, 2006

I'm not a computer techie but this might work

https://www.google.com/hosted

I use it for my domain.
posted by heartquake at 5:18 PM on April 17, 2006