Do you send Spam to Yourself?

Welcome to the world of spoofed addresses. I'm sure you get your share of false none delivery reports from legit mail servers. Spoofed return addresses is just the latest game for spammers. If you think about it makes sense for them. They expect you to click on the link in their spam email not the reply button. So they mail millions of spam messages and if they get blocked by some spam filters they in turn send a none delivery message, most likely with the spam included, to the spoofed address. A spammer looks at that as a second chance. So don't believe they will go away by themselves anytime soon.

That's where SPF (Sender Policy Framework) comes into the spotlight. Xwall started SPF support last year and integrated SPF testing in the state of the art spam filter to produce a very effective new spam block..

So what is SPF doing for me?

SPF is a text record added to the MX records of the DNS server holding your Domain information. The text record contains a list of domains that are allowed to send mail through the mail server listed in your MX record. In addition contains the information from what other (or none) mail server these domains will send email. This makes it easy for any domain (ISP, business, school and so on) to say, "I only send mail from these machines." In turn Xwall can read the text record of the sending server, then compare that with the return address and …Bye Bye spammer!

How does a SPF look like?

This is the SPF text entry I made for one of our servers.

v=spf1 a mx ptr a:xwall.us a:xwall.net a:ceratec.net include:veriance.com -all

Anybody checking the record finds out that XWall.us, XWall.net and Ceratec.net may send mail through this server but no other domain. The entry also tells that these domains may also send mail through the server at veriance.com

So if you enable the SPF filter in your Xwall you will cut down on spam dramatically and you will no longer receive the cheap software offers from your friend ….or worse.

Don't forget to add that SPF record to your DNS so others have a chance to filter out the spoofed mail spammers send with your name on it.

To enable XWall looking up SPF records simply start the Xwall Admin program and select OPTIONS then SPAM . You will Find the SPF tab after the SLS services, Bayes filter, and Heuristic filter.

Find out more about adding SPF to your DNS record at http://spf.pobox.com They also have a generator to create your SPF record.

SPF is gaining momentum but some setup the record wrong and many don't have one yet. Still it's very effective. I do recommend to use the ESATInformer companion product so your users have the opportunity to retrieve messages the SPF filter blocked.