SPF Record Syntax: Mechanisms, Qualifiers, Modifiers, and Macros
dmarcguard.io42 points by meysamazad 7 hours ago
42 points by meysamazad 7 hours ago
I'm sorry this page needs to exist, it's partly my fault. I created the first "large scale" SPF record (for eBay and PayPal), and agreed that this was the best way to do it. I guess the people after me agreed too, because 20 years later it's still pretty much the same shape as when I made it!
But I don't have any regrets, the format was pretty straightforward and offered a lot of flexibility. The biggest issue was the parsing libraries handling all of the "include" statements correctly.
Eh, SPF is one of the few things I don't hate about modern e-mail. Pretty easy to figure out / tweak / parse. I like dealing with it way more than MTA-STS.
SPF flattening is difficult to get correct and then you have to check it every so often to update it.
DNSControl automates this. https://docs.dnscontrol.org/language-reference/domain-modifi...
(It’s open source)
> SPF record syntax follows one shape:
The first six words do not scream "human written" to me.
The overall structure of the document is no different than any other tech reference or RFC that I've read over the decades
I could tell before opening the link, but the pill tags and neon color palette are also a huge signal.
That’s obvious. But a genuine question: why does it matter? This seems to be a detailed reference document for a very technical purpose (and SEO juice for the company I guess).
If that’s what you want, you would be better served by RFC 7208: <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7208/>