Remove SPF terms that point at names that no longer exist
Why it matters
Several terms in the SPF record look up names that return nothing, and after more than two such lookups receivers may return a permanent error. The terms are usually left behind by services that were shut down.
The fix
- Find the a, mx, include or exists terms in the record whose target no longer has records (the finding says how many lookups were empty).
- Delete the terms for services you stopped using, or correct a mistyped domain name. Terms for live services must stay.
- Re-scan to confirm the count is back to two or fewer.
Related
- Reported by the SPF record check
- Publish an SPF record
- Merge the SPF records into one
- Fix the syntax error in the SPF record
- Replace +all in the SPF record with ~all
- Narrow the very large address range in the SPF record
- Change ?all in the SPF record to ~all
- Choose the right SPF ending for this domain
- End the SPF record with ~all or -all
- Bring the SPF record under 10 DNS lookups
- Leave room under the SPF lookup limit
- Fix the SPF include that has no SPF record
- Break the loop in the SPF includes
- Replace the include that has several SPF records
- Replace the ptr mechanism in the SPF record
- Check the SPF terms that use macros
- Re-run the scan if part of the SPF record could not be read
Scan your domain to see whether this applies to you.