If your SPF record exceeds the maximum limit of 10 DNS lookups, then SPF permerror (short for permanent error) occurs. It causes email deliverability and security issues, impacting the performance of DKIM and DMARC operations. All these issues expose emails and domains to phishing, spoofing, and spam attacks.
How to Stay Within the SPF DNS-Lookup Limit to Avoid the Permerror Problem in SPF Records?
These implementations and SPF specifications can help you decrease the need for DNS lookups or DNS queries and steer clear of the issue-
- Remove unnecessary include statements from your SPF DNS records.
- Use the sender IP addresses belonging to the ip4 and ip6 range.
- Remove mechanisms belonging to the same domain.
- Delete all “ptr” mechanisms.
- Remove any invalid or unused domain references.
- SPF flattening or compression.