The service I use to register davidakin.com (and davidakin.ca, for that matter) is ready to implement SPF — Sender Policy Framework — what some in the Internet community say represents a real hope to cut down on spam and viruses. I'm not going to try to explain SPF for a couple of reasons. First, I'm still trying to figure it out and, secondly, the link I provided in the previous sentence does a much better job.
Basically, though, adopters of SPF will add some information to their DNS record that can be useful for operators of mailservers to determine if, indeed, mail that purports to be sent from a user at davidakin.com is indeed coming from davidakin.com.
I'm not sure if davidakin.com should activate SPF and I'm looking for input. Do you use it? What do you think? I'm willing to put up with a lot of spam and viruses because the inconvenience of having to deal with the crap in my e-mail inbox is nothing compared to my fear of missing some really important message. That's where I'm starting from when I start to evaluate anti-spam measures.
Thats why we developed SimpleFilter David. There is no fear of missing any legit email 🙂
One major problem with SPF is that it blocks “legitimate forgeries” (as they are called here). For instance, I have an email address something like jeremyw@firstisp.com. However, I am currently using another ISP, and the mailserver for firstisp.com doesn't let me send mail if I connect from otherisp.com (this is as it should be). Therefore, I send mail with smtp.otherisp.com, but claim to be “jeremyw@firstisp.com”. Now, if I could tell the administrators to add an SPF record authorizing forgeries if they come from otherisp.com, I would be in the clear. Even if they would do this, once other users begin doing the same, SPF breaks down, because as the list of authorized IPs which are allowed to “forge” grows, it becomes increasingly likely that a spammer will use one of these IPs.