SPF Records - worth doing or waste of time?

[gss03]

I've recently started reading up on SPF records for mail servers and just wondering what other peoples views are on them. Who's implemented it and has it cut down on spam using your domain name?

[Splash]

I have my personal domain using it, and... for the effort involved in setting them up I'd struggle to find a reason not to use them. It took all of 5 minutes to do.

[Jay]

well worth doing IMO. I always use them when I setup a mail server.

[Jiff Lemon]

RDNS more important, but as it takes 5 mins to do, like tesco say "Every little helps".

[badass]

RDNS more important, but as it takes 5 mins to do, like tesco say "Every little helps".

RDNS is required for an RFC complaint mail system. Anyone that doesn't have all of their DNS records set up properly deserves to not be able to send any email. If it wasn't for the fact that about 10% of mail systems are not compliant, a simple RDNS check would be able to bounce back about 95% of spam before it even hits the mail system. It would also mean that botnets sending spam are useless as no mail system would accept any email from them.
But no, instead, us IT engineers have to allow our systems to work with non complaint systems. It's like requiring the highways agency change all roads in the country because a handful of people want to drive tanks on the roads.

[chinny]

SPF does at least allow you to specify which IPs mail should legitimately come from for your domain..... I've heard a lot of people mis-configure them / forget to update them so you can end up getting false positives if you do SPF checks on inbound mail for filtering purposes though.

Like Jif Lemon says - it would be nice if reverse DNS was used 100% to start with....

[FatalSaviour]

I have my personal domain using it, and... for the effort involved in setting them up I'd struggle to find a reason not to use them. It took all of 5 minutes to do.

Precisely. For the almost Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V job that it entails, I'd definitely recommend it!
If you do need any help setting them up, just give anyone here a shout, as it should be straightforward enough to not give it a second thought.