SPF RRType

[Brad Knowles]

At 2:21 PM -0400 2005-08-11, Joseph S D Yao wrote:

>  <URL: http://spf.pobox.com/>.  I noticed no special resource record
>  type.  SPF uses TXT records.

	Correct.  It uses TXT records.

>  Be warned: this does break some things, and it seems that about a third
>  of the Internet is convinced that its wide implementation would
>  completely destroy e-mail, while about a quarter of the Internet
>  considers SPF its saviour and redeemer.

	There are problems with the SPF specification, and there are 
problems with the SPF implementations.  For one thing, many people do 
not implement SPF correctly, so they break mail for any domain that 
publishes SPF records.  Another problem is that spammers have started 
publishing SPF records, and very few legitimate domains have done the 
same.

	This means that the probability is very high that anyone using 
SPF records is a spammer, which I guess explains why no one seems to 
care that they have screwed up their SPF implementation and instead 
throw away anything coming from domains that have SPF records.


	I have my own personal rant on this subject at 
<http://bradknowles.typepad.com/considered_harmful/2004/05/spf.html>. 
And no, DomainKeys is not much better.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.