A majority of organizations use multiple email service providers and every single one of them requires their own email authentication tools. If your email service provider supports SPF, you will need to include their SPF mechanism in your own SPF record.
However, you can run into errors which can result in the non-delivery of your emails. One such error is the SPF Permerror. Today, we will show you how to fix an SPF permerror so your SMTP is secured.
What is an SPF Permerror?
An SPF permerror or ‘SPF Permanent Error’ is one of the most common SPF errors that comes up when the domain’s SPF record could not be properly interpreted resulting in the non-delivery of emails.
An SPF Permerror can occur due to these reasons:
- If the SPF record has a syntax error
- If a domain has multiple SPF records
- If the SPF evaluates more than 10 DNS mechanism lookups in an SPF record
What Is SPF Permerror – “Too Many DNS Lookups”?
This is the most common error out of the three types of SPF permerror. SPF has put several safeguards in place to make sure that you do not have any timeouts issues. An SPF will evaluate 10 DNS mechanisms in an SPF record. They include: a, mx, ptr, exists, include, redirect. If these DNS records exceed more than 10, it will raise an SPF Permerror. When an SPF permerror is raised, you will have to remove a few lookups/mechanisms.
What Does SPF Validation Failed Mean?
An SPF validation error comes up when the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) validation for the sender’s domain is not successful. To prevent these issues, an email admin should make sure that their domain for the domain registrar is set up properly. These are some common reasons an SPF validation error takes place:
- Multiple SPF Records
- SPF Validation is Not Available
- More than 10 DNS Lookups
- PTR Mechanism Usage
- Macro is Invalid
- Multiple Fallback Scenarios
A warning SPF validation failed will be given if your SPF record is not set properly. You can check invalid SPF record examples here.
Office 365 SPF Permerror
To prevent spoofing and get great email delivery, it is advisable to set up SPF in Microsoft (News – Alert) Office 365. To avoid SPF Permerror Office 365, you can go through these points.
- Only one SPF record is enough for your domain
- If you have a subdomain, create separate records
- To avoid getting a permerror, make sure the there are no DNS lookups over 10
An Office 365 SPF permerror can be avoided by following these points. An SPF error such as the SPF permerror and SPF temperror can give you a huge problem for delivering your emails. This way you won’t have any deliverability issues.
How to Fix An SPF Permerror?
SPF Flattening
SPF flattening is a process to flatten order of an SPF record to a flattened record that contains less than 10 DNS lookups/mechanisms. It is also called an SPF record compression. By using a flattened SPF record, you can flatten the number of DNS querying mechanisms/lookups to 1.
The SPF flattening works by removing the ‘a,’ ‘mx,’ and ‘include’ mechanisms to make a simplified SPF record and reduces the amount of DNS lookups. Without doing this, there will be an unnecessary amount of DNS lookups.
Other mechanisms such as ip4 and ip6 are added as they do not use any SPF lookups.
Avoiding Unnecessary ‘include’ Statements
An ‘include’ statement is a mechanism that is used to redirect the DNS lookup to verify authorized IPs of another domain’s SPF record. These ‘include’ statements in the original SPF records will count towards the limit of 10.
Removing Reference to Invalid and Unused Domains
If a domain is unused by you or your partner’s vendor then any ‘include’ statements that redirect the SPF check to a domain. To reduce the number of DNS lookups, you should always make sure that any inactive domains in your SPF record should be removed.
You can also use these methods to avoid an SPF permerror:
- Replacing the ‘include’ statement with ip4 and ip6 mechanisms when possible
- You can remove mechanisms that refer to the same domain
- Limit the use of PTR mechanisms as its usage can result in numerous DNS lookups
- Use SPF record checks
You can also know more by referring to the SPF FAQs.
Handling Forged Emails Using SPF
Scammers and spammers forge a lot of emails by using numerous domains and email addresses or even legitimate emails and domains to fool users into believing that the email was from a known entity or a person that they know. An SPF can be used for handling forged email and help detect and reject these forged emails.
The SPF protocol allows a domain to authorize the hosts that will use its domain name. Also, the host can be used to configure and check the authorization. This way, an SPF can reduce the number of forged emails quite significantly.
To Conclude
We hope this article gave you some information regarding how to fix an SPF permerror for better protection of our SMTP. An SPF permerror is an important SPF error that should be resolved as soon as possible. Resolving these errors as soon as possible will give you better SPF authentication and significant rise in email deliverability.
