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SPF record ends with +all — why this is worse than no SPF at all

The terminal all mechanism decides what happens to senders not matched by anything earlier in the record. +all means "pass" — an explicit statement that every host on the internet is authorized to send mail using your domain.

This is not a weak configuration, it is an anti-configuration: it hands spammers a valid SPF pass. It is nearly always the result of copying an example or misreading the qualifier syntax.

Change it immediately. There is no legitimate use of +all on a domain that sends mail.

How to fix it

  1. 1Replace the trailing +all with ~all (softfail) as an immediate stopgap.
  2. 2Confirm every legitimate sender is listed in the record.
  3. 3Tighten to -all (hardfail) once you have verified nothing legitimate is missing.

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