We’ve talked about spoofing before. Basically, it’s when evil spammers send out emails using your email address. There’s nothing that can be done to prevent spammers from doing this.
However, there is something that can help stop the spoofed emails from reaching their destination – the wonderful SPF record. SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework. The SPF record acts as an identifier for your account.
Here’s how it works, the evil spammer will send out a piece of spam. The receiving email system will get it and say, “Hmm. Is this really from who it says it’s from? Let’s see if it matches the SPF record.” The receiving system will take a look at the SPF record of who the email says it’s from and compare that with the system that sent the email. If the email is spoofed the systems won’t match. The email will be identified as spam at that point.
SPF records are assigned to your domain name by your website host. It’s often a free service.
