AOL Now Publishing SPF Records

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."

Comments

Re:How does this reduce spam in any shape or form?

[skaag]

My own experience:

I happen to be hosting a few domain names that attract a lot of joe jobs, if this method helps me reduce the amount of joe jobs by 5%, it was worth it. The amount is simply HUGE.

The Deterring factor:

If the Spammers are smart enough to check my domain for SPF records before doing a joe job on it, they might not select it for their joe job, simply because they will know their campaign might not be as effective as it would be if they used another domain that does not publish SPF records. So the deterring factor is important here!

Conclusion:

Every effort counts. And let's not forget that sometimes, all it takes for an idea to catch on is some large corporation using the technology or technique, and it will catch like wildfire. I'm also publishing SPF records for my own domains, and checking for them as well (with the help of qpsmtpd which has a nice SPF plugin).

Re:boo

[Saven Marek]

> 2) Spammers tend to use made up domains anyways.

This is true, but combined with domain checking AND SPF I can see it being more powerful than both.

for ex.
spammer makes up umergeh.drewhs.com
email gets canned because the domain is fake. lose for spammers

spammer sends faked address from aol.com
SPF shows its a fake sender (rteal IP not match aol.com spf list). lose for spammers

spammer at aol sends real spam from aol.com
aol come down and bite spammers head off, spammer goes to jail. lose for spammers!

SPF is only one tool, and there are many combine them together and you have strength

mac desktops, dare to be nude