Missing SPF Record

Severity: Medium

What does this mean?

Your zone publishes MX records — so it is set up to send and receive mail — but it has no SPF record. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a TXT record beginning v=spf1 that lists which mail servers are authorised to send email on behalf of your domain.

DNS Watchdog only raises this issue for zones that actually handle mail, which it recognises by the presence of MX records. A zone with no MX records is not expected to have SPF, so this issue is not raised for it.

Why this is a problem

Without an SPF record, there is nothing telling receiving mail servers which senders are legitimate. Any server on the internet can send mail claiming to be from your domain, and receivers have no way to distinguish it from genuine mail. This leaves your domain open to spoofing and makes your legitimate mail more likely to be treated as suspect.

What you should do

• Publish an SPF TXT record at your DNS provider listing your authorised senders, ending in ~all or -all
• Once published, review it against Invalid SPF Record to confirm the syntax is correct