{"id":1913,"date":"2021-05-31T15:41:29","date_gmt":"2021-05-31T12:41:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/?p=1913"},"modified":"2023-03-14T14:00:05","modified_gmt":"2023-03-14T12:00:05","slug":"add-an-spf-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/add-an-spf-record\/","title":{"rendered":"Add an SPF record"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SPF stands for<\/span> Sender Policy Framework,<\/b> and it’s one of the <\/span>most basic protections<\/b> we have against email spoofing attacks. You can implement it with a few simple steps, and you don’t need a budget or additional services to enable it, so it makes no sense to ignore it. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s see how it works and what you need to do to set it up on your <\/span>ScalaHosting account. <\/b>Modern email communication is supported by the<\/span> Simple Mail Transfer Protocol<\/b> (SMTP) \u2013 a protocol that allows computers and servers to send emails claiming to be from any source address.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This wasn’t too much of a problem back in the <\/span>1970s<\/b> when <\/span>SMTP<\/b><\/a> was developed, but it has since been exploited by phishers and spammers trying to fool victims into opening malicious messages and clicking phishing links – <\/span>SPF was invented to stop this.<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suppose you have an online service running under the domain example.com, and a hacker is trying to impersonate you. Unfortunately, it’s<\/span> trivially easy to forge an email<\/b> that has admin@example.com set as the sender. However, SPF gives email providers a way of checking whether<\/span> the source is legitimate.<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before accepting the email, the recipient’s provider will query example.com’s <\/span>DNS zone.<\/b><\/a> An SPF record in the DNS zone file<\/span> contains the IP address of example.com’s mail server. <\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If an email is coming from an @example.com address, but the IP doesn’t match the one in the SPF record, then the<\/span> sender’s address has been spoofed, and the message gets blocked. <\/b>To enable <\/span>SPF<\/b><\/a> on your domain, you need to<\/span> add a TXT record<\/b> to its DNS zone file. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

SPanel and cPanel, the control panels you use to <\/span>manage ScalaHosting’s shared and managed VPS<\/a> hosting plans<\/b>, let you edit your domain’s DNS zone through an easy-to-use graphical interface. Here are the exact steps you need to take.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

SPanel<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By default, <\/span>SPanel<\/b><\/a> creates a new SPF record for every domain you add to it. You can find it in the <\/span>DNS Editor<\/b> available on the <\/span>User Interface’s homepage.<\/b> It mandates that emails for your domain should only come from your ScalaHosting virtual server. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to use another provider for your outgoing messages, you can<\/span> modify the SPF record<\/b> with the <\/span>Edit<\/b> button.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Add<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

If you need to<\/span> add another record, <\/b>you can use the form above the list of existing ones.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Add<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Make sure you<\/span> pick TXT from the Type drop-down menu<\/b> and use the correct syntax.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

cPanel<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In <\/span>cPanel<\/b><\/a>, mail-related DNS records are best managed through the <\/span>Email<\/b> Deliverability<\/b> interface accessible via the control panel’s homepage.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Add<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

It displays a list of all the domains added to your<\/span> cPanel account<\/b> along with any potential problems in the <\/span>Email Deliverability Status <\/b>column. If there are any issues with the current records, you can click the <\/span>Repair <\/b>button to let cPanel fix them automatically.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alternatively, you can use the <\/span>Manage<\/b> button to edit existing records and add new ones.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Add<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

If you happen to have any further questions, you can <\/span>get in touch with our technical support experts at any time.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework, and it’s one of the most basic protections we have against email spoofing attacks. You can implement it with a few simple steps, and you don’t need a budget or additional services to enable it, so it makes no sense to ignore it.  Let’s see how it works and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1913"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5463,"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913\/revisions\/5463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}