On Wednesday 21 July 2004 21:44, suse@rio.vg wrote:
I set up my servers to publish SPF, but not check it for incoming mail. My customers attempted to e-mail people who used domain hosting sites that did not specifically modify their software for SPF. My customer's e-mail did not reach their recipients.
Then the recipients obviously use an ISP that does check SPF records *and* they use forwarding. In that case they have a problem with their ISP. You could have prevented their problems by publishing ?all in your SPF records and the e-mail should get through, even when they use forwarding. As an example, AOL and Amazon for instance do this, precisely to prevent the problems you're picturing.
The whole problem is that the breakage is not at the publishing domain nor the recipient, but at the middle man.
No, it is the ISP of the recipient in combination with the forwarding of e-mail. If the ISP decides to check for SPF records but the customer wants to forward e-mail from their vanity domain to this ISP there is a problem. The ISP should allow their customers to switch off the SPF checking for them or the recipient should ask their hosting providers to switch from forwarding to remailing.
The "ways around" all involve convincing the middle man to change their software.
Not at all. You can decide to end your SPF record with ?all and there will be no such problem, since the SPF neutral will allow the e-mail through.
As the originating ISP of the e-mail, there is nothing I can do.
See above. Publish ?all and you'll be fine. Domains checking SPF properly will pick up that the e-mail came from a legitimate client and people using forwarding will still be able to recieve their mail. Regards, Arjen