MetaChat - Metachat, hope me. I have to set up SPF on my email and it's scary...

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25 April 2006

Metachat, hope me. I have to set up SPF on my email and it's scary... →[More:]I went to www.openspf.org, just like my nice tech support person told me to, and I followed the setup thingee, which after many educated guesses and crossed fingers presented me with this: v=spf1 a mx ~al

Which I am now supposed to enter into my DNS server.

*blank stare*

Okay, I'm not that illiterate, I've dealt with transferring a domain and website last year after getting royally annoyed at GoDaddy, but I never got around to moving my three domain names, and the one infrequently used email address that lives there. So I know what a DNS server is, but...

Hold my hand, geeks of Mecha. Consider all the poor people who are currently getting spammed apparenlty from my f*cking domain. Or you could think of me, who is finding her inbox silting up with the consequent bounces.

post by: jokeefe at: 22:23 | 6 comments

What name server software are you using?

posted by cmonkey 25 April | 22:33

What name server software are you using?

cmonkey, I don't even know how to answer that question. I'm sorry. *feels stupid*

posted by jokeefe 25 April | 22:51

Well firstly I have SPF and it's doing next to nothing for me because a spammer has been using my domain name all week. Bastard. But hey, it's better to have it than to not have it.

Next, that SPF line doesn't look quite right to me. I think it should end ~all not ~al. You should double-check this and go through the SPF wizard again.

I don't really know GoDaddy but the key to this is that you need to add a TXT record to your DNS and then put that string of text in it. Hopefully it's pretty obvious how to do that otherwise we're going to be stuck!

posted by dodgygeezer 26 April | 04:07

It's ok jokeefe I don't even know what SPF means other than something to keep me from sunburning.

posted by chewatadistance 26 April | 07:41

Agreed that it should read "v=spf1 a mx ~all"

That means that if your domain name is sargassosea.net (guessing from your MeFi profile) then mail servers at the following IP addresses, and _ONLY_ the following IP addresses, should be sending outbound mail that ends with @sargassosea.net in the From: line...

From the "a":

66.33.221.95

From the "mx":

66.33.219.42
66.33.219.36
66.33.219.35

The DNS record you need to create (and I'm guessing based on the question you're using some web based DNS thingy at Dreamhost) should look something like:

sargassosea.net. IN TXT "v=spf1 a mx ~all"

I would imagine that the support folks at Dreamhost can answer any further questions you may have.

posted by togdon 26 April | 09:22

Thank you all! I'm going to give this another go, now that I've had a decent night's sleep and my brain seems to be ticking over again.

In the meantime, if you, like many other (likely) hundreds of people, have been getting emails from XXXX@sargassosea.net about awesome stock deals and such like, please feel free to ignore. :D

posted by jokeefe 26 April | 13:20

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