SPF none
The SPF result when the domain publishes no SPF record, or no valid domain could be taken from the session to check.
What it means
none means the receiver has no SPF information: the checked domain has no TXT record starting with v=spf1, or the identity was not a usable domain name. RFC 7208 treats it as the absence of a statement, not as a failure.
Receivers still weigh it. Gmail and Yahoo require every sender to set up SPF or DKIM, so a domain with no SPF record relies entirely on DKIM. Under DMARC, none gives no SPF pass, so DMARC can pass only through aligned DKIM.
A domain that sends no mail should publish v=spf1 -all rather than nothing, so that forged mail gets fail instead of none.
Related terms
On this site
Sources
What this definition rests on. The wording is ours; the facts are theirs.
- RFC 7208: Sender Policy Framework (SPF), section 2.6.1rfc-editor.org
- RFC 7208: Sender Policy Framework (SPF), section 8.1rfc-editor.org
- Google: Email sender guidelinessupport.google.com
All 432 terms in the glossaryThe wiki: blocklists and bounce codes