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My little developer mind never really managed to understand how to do it, so maybe you can help me.

I'm using Google Apps for Domains and MyDomain as DNS external service.

Edit: Tough crowd, in Google apps says:

Change the SPF record to fight SPAM (optional)

You may define the SPF record to authorize only certain IP addresses to send email for your domain. This will prevent spammers from sending unauthorized email under a forged address from your domain.

HopelessN00b
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Eduardo Molteni
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    SPF isn't an anti-spam technique. – womble Oct 28 '09 at 17:47
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    Why the downvotes? I hope its not because he is confused about the purpose of an SPF record.... – Kyle Brandt Oct 28 '09 at 17:53
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    SPF does fight spam by making it harder for people to impersonate you in spam. – Doug Luxem Oct 28 '09 at 18:04
  • Which does nothing to stop spam, because there's an infinite number of other domains which can be used in a From: address. – womble Oct 28 '09 at 18:07
  • Womble: You're 'infinite' inspired me to look that up :-) So this site says 112.6 million domains http://www.domaintools.com/internet-statistics/ . Although I don't see any information about where those numbers come from. If I had to guess those are maybe the second level domains. – Kyle Brandt Oct 28 '09 at 18:25
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    @womble - Correct SPF helps makes it someone else's problem. Reducing backscatter to your domain is a good thing. – Doug Luxem Oct 28 '09 at 18:30
  • @Kyle: Investigate "domain tasting". @DLux: You still receive exactly as much spam if you have SPF records as if you didn't. – womble Oct 28 '09 at 18:36
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    No where did he say he way trying to prevent inbound spam...in fact the edit he added clearly shows "from your domain." Anyway, SPF helps reduce inbound backscatter and helps maintain the reputation of your domain - all of which are problems in the fight against spam. – Doug Luxem Oct 28 '09 at 18:38
  • @womble: Domain tasting is becoming harder with recent ICANN policy changes. – Martijn Heemels May 08 '10 at 19:31

3 Answers3

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You can use the Microsoft Sender ID Framework SPF Record Wizard to generate SPF record.

matt wilkie
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alfish
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There is an article on Google Apps help about this.

http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=33786

All you need to do is add that TXT record and you're set. I don't know what you mean by "fight SPAM", as all this does is authenticate that the e-mail you are sending is not spoofed, so all it will do is help you get your e-mail in someone else's inbox instead of their spambox, if that is currently the case.

Mark Johnson
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gekkz
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    I did find this by google, this post was the first hit :) – Don Feb 17 '11 at 17:31
  • It will also refuse to authenticate spam that's pretending to come from you, and get that spam in someone else's spambox instead of their inbox. How is that not "fight SPAM"??? – skue Nov 28 '11 at 00:35
  • I probably understood this differently based on his initial post; I probably thought he wanted to stop spam from reaching *his* inbox. Since the post is from 2009, I can't really remember :). – gekkz Dec 11 '11 at 12:27
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SPF doesn't prevent spam from being sent to you, it only helps ensure that no one sends spam as you. Also, when bulk mailing, some mail services (hotmail, google, yahoo) pretty much require the sender has an SPF record or else the mail will likely end up in junk mail folders. Also look into setting up a DomainKey record, as this is Microsoft's way of accomplishing almost the same thing.

Aaron Brown
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    Agreed. The Microsoft attempt you probably meant is Sender ID, which is similar to DomainKey, but was less popular. Recently DomainKey is being succeeded by DKIM, which is very similar to DomainKey but is standardized. – Martijn Heemels May 08 '10 at 19:36