will cpanel/whm support spf records?

[Jeff-C]

DNS Report (www.dnsreport.com) now states:

Warn: Your domain does not have an SPF record. This means that spammers can easily send out E-mail that looks like it came from your domain, which can make your domain look bad (if the recipient thinks you really sent it), and can cost you money (when people complain to you, rather than the spammer). You may want to add an SPF record before October 1, 2004, the target date for domains to have SPF records in place.

Will Cpanel/WHM automatically create the appropriate SPF recoreds for each account?

[SarcNBit]

You may want to add an SPF record before October 1, 2004, the target date for domains to have SPF records in place.

Where did they pull this date?

Please run a search for exisiting threads before creating duplicate threads. A simple search on 'SPF' would have revealed a half dozen or so discussions (some as feature requests) about this topic.

[myrem]

Where did they pull this date?

It's the date AOL is going to switch to using SPF for their 'whitelisted' senders. Note, this doesn't mean you get whitelisted by aol just for having a valid SPF -- this refers to senders AOL has in their own 'whitelist'. If you are considered a 'whitelist' sender with AOL, then you will want to implement an SPF record in your DNS to retain that status.

Other than that, I don't see any reason CP needs to rush -- might as well wait and see how things flush-out over the coming months... there are bound to be revisions to the system.


Edit, correction... it's Microsoft/Hotmail which set the date:

"Microsoft's announcement means that beginning in October, the company will check inbound e-mail's source IP address for an SPF record. In other words, Microsoft will check whether the person responsible for that outbound mail server has published an SFP record. E-mail that passes the SPF test will be passed through for delivery. E-mail that doesn't pass this simple test must go through additional hoops before it can be delivered to the inbox."
http://www.clickz.com/experts/em_mkt...nt.php/3388371

http://slashdot.org/articles/04/07/2...id=109&tid=111

[SarcNBit]

It's the date AOL is going to switch to using SPF for their 'whitelisted' senders

Edit, correction... it's Microsoft/Hotmail which set the date:

Thanks for the tip. I have been looking into SPF (or CallerID for email or whatever MS is going to call their version), and am not convinced that it is the end all for spam. It certainly seems less of a nightmare than the challenge/response system AOL plans to implement after buying Mailblocks Inc. .

[rs-freddo]

It's not supposed to be the "end all" for spam - it simply stops joe-jobbing.

[rs-freddo]

I read a little about Mailblocks and their challenge/response is better than ASK or Boxtrapper - both boxtrapper and ASK can have spam delivered by utilising a simple autoresponder. Mailblocks really does require human intervention. However I am not convinced of challenge/response 's worth. Sure it keeps the inbox clean but it basically doubles your email traffic. Spammers will keep sending and you'll keep challenging, effectively doubling the work of your email server. I have had spammers sending to non existent email addresses for three years - it simply doesn't matter to them. Rather than challenging these spams I cut my loses and block them at smtp - this is the least work on the email server.

With challenge/response i can see the email load going higher and higher until it eventually shuts down email delivery. It's not a solution to spam, just a clean inbox solution. Better clients use a whitelist like Qurb and halve the load on the email system.

[albatroz]

SPF will certainly help to block spam sent to providers like Hotmail and AOL and so on.

But will not help you block spam sent to your server unless SPF filtering is implemented
in your Cpanel in some way.... SpamAssassin 3.0 is said to support it. But guest what?
Cpanel still comes with SA version 2.63 (while the current version is 2.64) ....

BTW I am not sure about numbers but most of the spam I receive come from forged
hotmail, aol and yahoo addresses, imagine my happiness if I could avoid them all....

[cpaneljosh]

This is also being tracked in our bugzilla

http://bugzilla.cpanel.net/show_bug.cgi?id=1030

[albatroz]

Does it mean that we can finally create SPF compliant TXT DNS entries with WHM zone editor?

This is also being tracked in our bugzilla

http://bugzilla.cpanel.net/show_bug.cgi?id=1030

[rs-freddo]

You always could - just make sure it's not the last entry.

[chirpy]

And if (when?) implemented, please make it optional for those of us who don't want them

[casey]

And if (when?) implemented, please make it optional for those of us who don't want them

I'll second that request.