SPF, which stands for Sender Policy Framework, is an e-mail protection system, which is designed to verify whether an email message was sent by an official server. Using SPF protection for a domain name will prevent the faking of emails generated with the domain. In layman's terms: activating this attribute for a domain name makes a particular record in the Domain Name System (DNS) containing the IP addresses of the servers which are permitted to send e-mail messages from mailboxes using the domain. The moment this record propagates worldwide, it exists on all the DNS servers that direct the Internet traffic. Every time an email message is sent, the first DNS server it uses verifies whether it originates from an accredited server. In the event it does, it's sent to the destination address, however if it does not come from a server indexed in the SPF record for the particular domain, it is discarded. Thus nobody will mask an e-mail address to make it appear as if you are e-mailing spam. This approach is also identified as email spoofing.