If you use Email to Fax you may have received an Email failed SPF validation message. You may be scratching your head wondering what this is about. Not to worry! The issue is quickly solvable and a good idea to boot. First, we will explain what SPF is and why it is important you have it setup, and we will also offer some technical information that will help your IT staff get it done quickly and easily.
SPF or “Sender Policy Framework” is a email server security setting that is becoming standard. It enables a domain (xyz.com) to publicly state which servers may send emails on your behalf. Basically it’s like a blue check mark on twitter but for email. It lets other Email servers know that the email you sent is really from your domain and not some forged email by some hacker overseas. A vast majority of servers are already setup for SPF and the setup is rather easy but some administrators may have missed it or haven't implemented it yet.
Why is this important and why are we enforcing it.
If someone were to compromise your systems and gain an understanding of your configuration they could forge emails from your domain to anyone else utilizing our Email to Fax Service. A scammer could send fake invoices to your customers, outside of Email to Fax they could send viruses and ransomware to your customers or anyone else and it would appear to come from your domain and email account. When your SPF is properly setup scammers can still try to do this but the receiving email servers would spot the fake quickly and remove it. We have recently restricted emails from senders that do not support SPF to prevent the aforementioned situation from occurring. It may be temporarily inconvenient but we put security first at WestFax and we can help you figure this out.
So how do you fix it?
We always say that you should consult your IT staff to handle it but if you are the “IT Staff” you may have to rely on google for some of this but we'll include some guides below. Based on who you use as an email provider you can use the following guides to set up SPF.
Who is your email provider:
Google / Gmail SPF Setup
Office 365 Email Setup
Appriver Email setup
Zoho Workplace
Rackspace
Intermedia Exchange
All others
Want to roll out your own SPF record? Use this tool to generate your SPF and follow this guideon setting it up.
Once you are done with this it may take 15-30 minutes for the changes to take effect. Adding an SPF record is a simple process that pays huge dividends. Your emails are more trusted, less emails end up in spam and your customers will not be duped by scammers. While you are at it you should setup DKIM/DMARC too. Reach out to us today at 800-473-6208 or sales@westfax.com to learn more.