September 8, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Spammers and phishers are using the Sender Protection Framework in greater numbers to further proliferate spam, industry analysts say, a worrisome development considering SPF was designed in the first place to prevent spam.
Level 1 PCI DSS Certified Service Provider! DataPipe delivers the best network & support; top tier data centers; New York metro, Silicon Valley, London, Hong Kong, Shanghai. DataPipe - Personal Touch, Global Reach.
The Sender Protection Framework is an extension of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol for sending email between servers. SPF is designed to prevent spammers from forging entries in the "from" field of an email through an Internet protocol authentication process that determines which mail servers are authorized to send email from a specific domain as the return address. According to the framework, the domain sending email must first establish an SPF record published in the domain name server. If the email comes from a domain that is not authorized, the DNS server will not forward the email to its requested destination.
However, analysts say that SPF cannot stop spammers from sending spam from a domain in which it is a member. Recent studies show that spammers are using SPF in greater numbers, with 38 percent more spam messages registering SPF records than other mail. Analysts believe this trend potentially shows that SPF is useless in the fight against spam.
