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AOL Now Publishing SPF Records

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the slowly-gaining-ground dept.

SPF Fan writes "It looks like SPF is starting to catch on with the bigger ISPs. AOL is now publishing SPF records which you can verify with 'dig aol.com txt'. Will Hotmail and Yahoo be far behind? Who else is publishing SPF records for their domains? Slashdot has covered SPF in the past a couple times."

6 of 340 comments (clear)

  1. Suggestion for submitter by ObviousGuy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Don't assume we all know what "SPF" is. Unless you mean "Sun Protection Factor", you are leaving the /. readers to wonder.

    Please, if discussing a topic that is not widely known, put a short description or definition in the article writeup.

    Thanks.

    --
    I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
    1. Re:Suggestion for submitter by use_compress · · Score: 4, Insightful

      you are leaving the /. readers to wonder.

      He did provide a highly visbile link to the definition of SPF. That page gave a very good overview of the topic. Why cater to (define NOT_FLAMEBATE)lazy people who don't read the articles?

    2. Re:Suggestion for submitter by drooling-dog · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Why cater to (define NOT_FLAMEBATE)lazy people who don't read the articles?

      Well, one reason would be that linked articles often get slashdotted before most people get to them. Another is that some would like a brief heads-up without having to read an entire treatise on the subject. But then, real geeks know that keeping outsiders in the dark is the key to their mystique...

  2. How about dynamic IPs? by ivern76 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This just screws the people on dynamic IPs even more than we were before. I guess I'll have to keep paying a monthly fee just so I can have a smarthost to tunnel my mail through, since even more mail servers are going to think I'm a spammer now.

  3. Tag it by Epeeist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How about using the proper tag,

    <acronym title="Sender Permitted From">SPF</acronym>

    Or if you want to include it in a link

    <a title="Sender Permitted From" href="link">SPF</a>

  4. I see a problem here.... by matth · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Question on this whole SPF thing.
    I'm interested in it but have a slight issue with it at the moment that
    I'd like to get resolved.

    My domain is: mydomain.com
    Customer A is traveling and is using his e-mail of joe@mydomain.com
    However, I do IP filtering on my mail server (not SASL AUTH), for my
    dial-up pools.
    When Customer A is at hotel he must use their mail server to send mail
    out, so his mail will be rejected because the hotel mail server isn't
    listed in mydomain.com's SPF txt list.

    You suggest running SASL AUTH as a work around for this, however in my
    experience this creates MORE of a spam problem then not using SPF..
    here's why:

    On a mail server with over 40,000 users it's relitively easy for someone
    with a password cracker to hammer away at common names like 'joe'
    'jeffp', etc and try to get some passwords. Once they have a
    username/password combo they can happily send e-mail out as that user
    through MY mail server, and I can't do anything about them. Doing IP
    filtering requires that they are on MY network to send mail through MY
    server, thus allowing me to terminate/prosecute/etc the person.