Received-SPF: unknown - Yet it is accepted anyway

[cyberbeach]

In the header of a message that failed SPF but was sent on anyway by MailEnable:

"Received-SPF: unknown (mydomain.com: error in processing during lookup of domain of sendingdomain.com: Syntax error in SPF)"

When I search the forums, I see this problem existed back in 2004 and a solution was hoped for "soon".

PS: I've never written a filter, I don't know the syntax or the filter language, and I thought that I could enforce SPF with a checkbox in MailEnable.

[Brett Rowbotham]

I would suppose that, technically, an SPF error is not the same as failing SPF.

If the system threw this mail away you might be losing something that you should have got but for someones error in setting up SPF on their side, or a glitch in SPF lookup at the time.

On my system I put SPF failure, softfail and error into quarantine so I can check them. If I had made the setting to refuse mail on SPF failure then I would have lost mail from my own ISP who stuffed up their SPF record.

Cheers,
Brett

[cyberbeach]

I would suppose that, technically, an SPF error is not the same as failing SPF.

If the system threw this mail away you might be losing something that you should have got but for someones error in setting up SPF on their side, or a glitch in SPF lookup at the time.

On my system I put SPF failure, softfail and error into quarantine so I can check them. If I had made the setting to refuse mail on SPF failure then I would have lost mail from my own ISP who stuffed up their SPF record.

Cheers,
Brett

Many large companies are bouncing mail now due to no SPF or bad SPF.

With 98% of mail traffic now spam, everyone I know seems ready to bounce blacklists, any kind of SMTP non-conformance, and SPF.

Why bother with SPF if you just let it through? I can just turn it off in ME and get the same effect.

I have no idea how to filter anything into quarantine. If I have to spend more than 2 hours learning to write scripts, it's not worth it to me.

I like ME because of the close to 100% GUI configuration.

[Brett Rowbotham]

Why bother with SPF if you just let it through? I can just turn it off in ME and get the same effect.

I could just delete SPF failures but, having a low throughput email server and a fairly efficient external quarantine handler, it is easier to accept the mail than to lose clients because of some mistake somewhere.

I have no idea how to filter anything into quarantine. If I have to spend more than 2 hours learning to write scripts, it's not worth it to me.

You don't need to learn scripting to implement simple filters. This is also done through a GUI setup. Check out the Filters section under Messaging Manager in the ME Admin MMC. This is also dealt with in the Pro manual.

Cheers,
Brett

[cyberbeach]

You don't need to learn scripting to implement simple filters. This is also done through a GUI setup. Check out the Filters section under Messaging Manager in the ME Admin MMC. This is also dealt with in the Pro manual.

Cheers,
Brett

For some reason, I thought the FILTERS screen needed a filename of a script...

So thanks - I'll check that out - appreciate the pointer.

[crnunez]

In the header of a message that failed SPF but was sent on anyway by MailEnable:

"Received-SPF: unknown (mydomain.com: error in processing during lookup of domain of sendingdomain.com: Syntax error in SPF)"

When I search the forums, I see this problem existed back in 2004 and a solution was hoped for "soon".

PS: I've never written a filter, I don't know the syntax or the filter language, and I thought that I could enforce SPF with a checkbox in MailEnable.

I have the same issue. Thanks for explain it or any solution.

[cyberbeach]

I have the same issue. Thanks for explain it or any solution.

The answer as I understand it is in this thread, see above.

Basically, the idea is that the MailEnable community is not yet ready to bounce messages that fail SPF, because too many mailservers don't have SPF or are misconfigured.

At this time, if you want to block messages that fail SPF or have SPF errors, there's no GUI checkbox for that - you have to handle it via the FILTERS capability (see more on that above as well)

Hope this helps.