Sender Policy Framework (SPF)

There are many different ways to try to reduce spam that makes it past the spam filters and into your Inbox. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is one of those methods. SPF is still very early in its design phase so you will find varied levels of implementation throughout the Internet.

History

Email was originally designed back in the 80's and came into widespread use during the 90's. During those first 10 years, the Internet was a very friendly and wide open place. The rise of spam quickly changed the atmosphere, causing administrators to configure their mail servers with a more protective stance. The original design of email allowed you to specify where you receive mail, but provided no method for you to say "Email is only valid if I sent it from THIS server". SPF is one of the new methods being proposed that gives an email server this ability.

Sending

Only a small percentage of Internet service providers offer SPF configuration capability. The Ivenue domain system creates a generic SPF configuration for your domain. Should you desire to make specific changes to your SPF setting, it is available in our system but you must call Customer Service to make the required changes. Those settings can only be modified by Customer Service.

Receiving

The Ivenue mail servers do have the ability to check that the SPF record is honored. However, since SPF adoption throughout the Internet is still in its early stages, our mail servers do not reject mail if it fails the SPF check. This configuration is subject to change as more Internet service providers begin to use SPF for their email. This is not adjustable on a per user basis. It is either enabled for everybody or disabled for everybody.