SPF Does Its Job – Pity The Host Didn’t

SPF has been around for a couple of years now and is included with all installs of Spam Assassin by default.
So why is it that some hosting companies can’t understand how it works or how email filtering works?
It’s not rocket science.
SPF, which I’ve mentioned here several times in the past, allows a domain owner to specify which mail hosts can send mail from the domain. It’s of particular relevance if you are likely to be spoofed, so it’s hardly surprising that financial institutions are using SPF records.
What is surprising is that some Irish hosting companies obviously do not know how to configure their mail so that SPF actually works.
One client contacted our technical support team this morning as their mails weren’t reaching their destination. Why? It seems that for some reason the hosting company in question’s mail servers were changing the headers of the mails, so the source IP was being set to be the email filter and not the actual source itself. End result being that the mails couldn’t get through
Brilliant!