SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is an email authentication protocol that limits the authorized use of your email-sending domain. Once you have enlisted all the sender IP addresses and mail servers you trust, created an SPF record, and published it on your domain’s DNS, you need to run it through an SPF record lookup tool.
The tool checks your SPF record against a number of elements (for example- the use of Mechanisms, Modifiers, and Qualifiers along with syntax evaluation for the queried TXT record) and brings up errors. As domain owners, you are expected to rectify all of them at the earliest for the sake of your SPF DNS record’s validation and email deliverability.
Some popular and free SPF lookup tools are offered by Google Admin, Kitterman, and Mimecast.
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What is Kitterman SPF?
Kitterman SPF is a tool of the same category that evaluates supplied domains’ SPF records to highlight syntactical and configurational errors. It also extracts the %d macros for the queried domain name or server and tests the verification status of the published SPF record. This whole practice ensures spam emails never reach their desired receivers’ mailboxes.
Mentions of the Kitterman SPF tool always bring up a discussion about Scott Kitterman, one of its primary moderators. He is responsible for handling a list of DNS providers supporting TXT records and has based his research on the information laid down in the pyspf SPF library for email message validation.
How to use Kitterman SPF?
Luckily, you don’t have to be a tech-Ninja to use Kitterman SPF. Just click on this link, enter the domain name you want to test, and click the ‘Get SPF Record (if any)’ button. You will instantaneously get results on the same page; fix errors if highlighted.
To analyze an incoming mail request, domain admins or company owners have to fill out the mail server’s address along with the .mail from address. You may need to manually paste the generated SPF record content if it isn’t published on the domain’s DNS yet.
In the end, you should take home a note that all internet and email security experts preach the combination of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for ultimate email security for your official domain names. If you are still unsure about the SPF check process, then take action and get on a discovery call with us. We live to simplify things for our clients.