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Posts Tagged ‘dns’

Improve Email Deliverability by Setting Up SPF Records

Thursday, May 25th, 2023

Recently, Gmail changed its email acceptance policies to reject emails from sending domains without SPF or DKIM records. If they can’t be sure a message originated from an authorized server, it may end up in the spam folder. Setting up SPF records is one way to improve email deliverability, prevent spoofing, and keep your emails out of the spam folder.

What are SPF Records?

SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework. SPF allows administrators to specify exactly which servers are allowed to send emails on behalf of a domain by adding a record to the domain name settings (DNS). When an email is sent to another service provider, like Gmail, they compare the sender’s IP address to the SPF record. The email will only be delivered to the inbox if the record lists the correct server address. If the server is not listed, the email service provider assumes the message is forged and may send it to spam.

SPF records are primarily used to stop forged emails. Setting up SPF records for your sending IP addresses will prevent spammers from using your domain as their “From” sending address. For example, say your company domain is “trial.com,” and your SPF record correctly identifies your sending server’s IP address. Any messages you send will be verified as coming from your organization and will be delivered. When spammers try to use trial.com as their sending domain, the mail service provider will compare their IP address to your SPF record. When they do not match, the message will be flagged as suspicious.

However, SPF records do not prevent spammers from using other tactics to infiltrate your inbox. They could set up a similar domain like “trail.com” and set up SPF records for that domain to avoid scrutiny. SPF should be used in conjunction with other security measures like DKIM and DMARC to increase deliverability and protect your sending domains.

How to Set Up SPF Records

You must work with the domain owner or administrator to set up an SPF record. First, you need to collect all of the IP addresses that your organization uses to send email. Then, you will need access to your domain settings to add the SPF record. Whoever manages your domain name and web hosting can help you add the record. If you have further questions about how to improve your email deliverability, please don’t hesitate to reach out to the LuxSci support team.

Tags: dkim, DMARC, dns, domain name service, email deliverability, gmail, spam, spf, spf records, spoofing
Posted in LuxSci Library: Email Programs and Devices, LuxSci Library: The Technical Side of Email
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Interview with Mark Jeftovic, CEO of easyDNS

Friday, July 24th, 2015

LuxSci has been partnered with easyDNS to provide DNS and domain registration services to its customers since 1999. Due to our sales volume, we have an “Enterprise DNS” portal that both LuxSci Support and its clients can access to manage their domains. LuxSci has stuck with easyDNS for all of these years due to their excellent support, the high quality of the DNS services, and the friendly and helpful attitude of easyDNS management. LuxSci also believes that by partnering with easyDNS, we are able to provide our clients with the best and most robust DNS services available. This is mission critical, because if your DNS is down, so is your business.

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Tags: anycast, denial of service, dns, dns poisoning, dos, dos attack, easydns, interview, jeftovic
Posted in LuxSci Insider, LuxSci Library: Insider Insight
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How to Tell Who Supports SMTP TLS for Email Transmission

Tuesday, January 27th, 2015

SMTP TLS (Transport Layer Security) is the mechanism by which two email servers, when communicating, can automatically negotiate an encrypted channel between them so that the emails transmitted are secured from eavesdroppers.

It is becoming ever more important to use a company that supports TLS for email transmission as more and more banks, health care, and other organizations who have any kind of security policy are requiring their vendors and clients to use this type of encryption for emailed communications with them. Additionally, if your email provider supports TLS for email transmission, and you are communicating with people whose providers do also, then you can be reasonably sure that all of the email traffic between you and them will be encrypted.

How do you find out if someone to whom you are sending email uses a provider who’s servers support TLS-encrypted communications? We will take you through the whole process step-by-step, but first let us note some 6 important truths about TLS connection encryption.

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Tags: dig, dns, ehlo, mx records, nslookup, smtp, smtp connection, starttls, tls, tls support
Posted in LuxSci Library: Security and Privacy, Popular Posts
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8 Ways to Protect yourself from Forged/Fake Email

Monday, January 26th, 2015

The Internet is rife with fake and forged email. Typically these are email messages that appear to be from a friend, relative, business acquaintance, or vendor that ask you to do something. If you trust that the message is really from this person, you are much more likely to take whatever action is requested — often to your detriment.

These are forms of social engineering — the “bad guys” trying to establish a trusted context so that you will give them information or perform actions that you otherwise would not or should not do.

Here we address some of the actions you can take to protect yourself from these attacks as best as possible. We’ll present these in the order of increasing complexity / technical difficulty.

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Tags: dkim, dns, email, fake, filtering, forged, html, phishing, read, social engineering, spam, spf
Posted in LuxSci Library: Security and Privacy, LuxSci Library: The Technical Side of Email
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Where’s the Email? Diagnosing and Resolving Issues with Missing Email

Monday, December 1st, 2014

In many ways, the Internet is still like the Wild Wild West. Email messages sent to you or from you can and do “go missing” for no apparent reason. This can happen no matter what email provider you use. So, what happened to these “AWOL” messages? How can you diagnose and solve the problem?