Took me 6 hours to fix a simple email spoofing issue

I spent an entire Saturday fighting with my SPF record for my domain hosted on GoDaddy. Turns out I had a typo in the IP address from a change I made 3 months ago. Everyone online kept saying to check the syntax but I was sure I had it right. Has anyone else wasted a whole day on something this basic?

2 comments

2 Comments

robertsmith1mo ago

Honestly, I just read a post the other day where a sysadmin said his SPF record was so broken it took him three days to realize he had forgotten the "v=spf1" part at the very beginning. Tbh, these records can be a nightmare because one wrong character can mess up all your email flow. Ngl, I think everyone who manages their own DNS has a horror story about a tiny typo causing huge issues. The worst part is when you think you've checked everything but it's something dumb like a missing colon or extra space. Just remember that looking at examples online helped me catch my own mistake, so maybe pull up a known good one and compare line by line.

riverknight1mo ago

Yeah that v=spf1 thing gets people all the time. Seen it happen with a buddy who kept getting his emails bounced for a whole weekend. He even tried rebuilding his DNS zone from scratch before realizing it was just that one missing tag. And dont get me started on people who add a space after the v= part by accident. That one tiny space will wreck your email delivery fast.