Did you know that anyone in the world can send e-mail that looks like it came from you? All they have to do is type a few simple commands on a unix computer or download a spam utility from the internet and, viola, they can send e-mail as anyone they want.
As a business owner, you need to protect yourself against this. You don’t want to be accused of sending spam, or worse, viruses.
All of this can be prevented by setting up an SPF (Send Policy Framework) record on the DNS server for your domain. If you are so inclined, you can get the hairy details at the Open SPF website. In a nutshell, SPF tells other mail servers the addresses computers that are allowed to send e-mail from your domain. If someone tries to send e-mail from an address that’s not listed, the e-mail should be considered unauthorized.
SPF records are highly recommended, especially if you send out a newsletter. In October, 2004, some large e-mail providers, like hotmail started quietly dropping e-mail that violated the SPF record. Even so, most webhosts still don’t add them by default.
How do you know whether you are vulnerable? You can go to you command prompt (on just about any computer that can access the internet) and type “nslookup -q=TXT your-domain.com”. Look for a line that starts with “v=spf…”. If it doesn’t show one, then your domain name isn’t protected.
If you need assistance configuring an SPF record, contact Modern Webspace about our website checkup service. We will check over 200 settings that could affect your ability to do business on the internet.