Yes, that SPF record is bad.  It needs to include all sources of
legitimate email for your domain.  Since you are using Google Apps,
you need to include Google's servers.

http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=178723

On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 5:06 PM, Merrill Oveson <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 4:54 PM, John Shaver <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 4:09 PM, Merrill Oveson <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> Pluggers:
>>>
>>>
>>> Pretend we are xyz company.  So my email is [email protected].  xyz
>>> email is hosted thru gmail.
>>>
>>> Some of our users got an email from [email protected].
>>> Now our support team never send the email.  It's obvious spam.
>>>
>>> The question is: If we flag the email as spam, are you flagging
>>> [email protected] as spam,
>>> or is gmail smart enough to know to flag the sent from ip address?
>>
>> This is called email spoofing.  If wanted to, I could send you an
>> email as [email protected] and it would come through fine.  If they
>> flag it as spam, then, in most spam systems, it will affect legitimate
>> emails from the same email address.
>>
>> The most common defense I've seen people try to use for this is SPF
>> records.  You can specify SPF information in your DNS TXT records that
>> specify which servers are allowed to send out mail from your domain.
>> Unfortunately, people don't always send email out through your SMTP
>> server.  When they are away from the office, they may want to send
>> mail from their home connection and their ISP may require them to send
>> out mail via their SMTP server and block ports otherwise (this is very
>> common among the big ISPs).  This means that legitimate mail will be
>> flagged due to SPF records.   I see very few large companies using
>> solid SPF records on their domain for this reason.  Most are just set
>> to flag, but not deny mail from other servers.
>>
>> The other issue is that many mail servers do not even check SPF
>> records and aren't required to, although I think most do.
>>
>>
>>> It drives me crazy that gmail doesn't show the full headers.
>>
>>
>> Even if you showed full headers, it would be very difficult to know
>> who the mail actually came from and if it was legitamate if you don't
>> know how to read email headers and see what servers we can confirm
>> they went to (gmails servers only know which server handed them the
>> mail, any other relays could be faked in the headers).
>>
>> More info on email spoofing:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spoofing
>>
>> and Sender Policy Framework:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework
>>
>> -John Shaver
>>
>> /*
>> PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net
>> Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug
>> Don't fear the penguin.
>> */
>
> Thanks for the responses...
>
> Yeah, I have an spf1 record in my DNS for our domain.
> I guess gmail didn't bother to read it, or it's set up wrong.  ?
>
> ie.:        v=spf1 a mx ?all
>
> Or does gmail require a special spf1 record setup in their DNS?
>
> /*
> PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net
> Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug
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