SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a method for email authentication, designed to authenticate the sender of an email. An SPF record is used by an Internet Service Provider to verify whether an email server is authorized to send emails for a domain or not. SPF Record Checker checks whether an SPF record for your email domain exists or not.
The email domain owner, using the SPF record, can direct the email receivers to fail the authentication for emails that are not sent from the authorized IP addresses. This gives the email owner the required authority to control which emails get authenticated by the mailboxes. This online SPF Checker tool helps you verify the presence and validity of your email domain’s SPF record.
DMARC functions properly only when the other two protocols i.e. DKIM and SPF are aligned properly. SPF is an important part of email security because:
The addition of an SPF record to the email domain is the first step towards aligning the three email authentication protocols.
By using this online SPF Record Checker tool, you can easily view if your SPF record exists or not. This is important for solidifying your outbound email security.
An example of the structure of an SPF record
v=spf1 a mx ip4:69.64.153.131 include:_spf.google.com ~all
Threatcop DMARC (TDMARC) is an Anti-Spoofing and DMARC Deployment tool that allows you to deploy DMARC best practices simply and efficiently. TDMARC offers features like Smart SPF, Smart DMARC, and Smart BIMI which allow you to set up these email protocols directly from the dashboard.
Get Free 7-Day TDMARC TrialCreating an SPF record requires the domain owner to collect the IP addresses used to send email, make a list of the domains to be used for sending emails, and finally create the SPF record and publish it to the DNS.
For checking whether or not an email passes SPF authentication, the receiving mail servers may have to make multiple DNS lookups. However, to protect the receiving mail servers against denial of service attacks, these servers are not permitted to make more than 10 domain lookups while evaluating the SPF record for an incoming email. SPF Flattening is a technique to prevent this situation.