bag65.co.uk

Microsoft Word smart quotes silently break email security

$ dig TXT bag65.co.uk

;; QUESTION SECTION:

;bag65.co.uk. IN TXT

;; ANSWER SECTION:

bag65.co.uk. 3600 IN TXT "“v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com include:spf.mandrillapp.com –all”"

What Happened

The admin drafted their SPF record in Microsoft Word, which converted their plain ASCII quote `"` into typographic smart-quotes (bytes `\226\128\156` / `\226\128\157`) and the hyphen before `all` into an en-dash (bytes `\226\128\147`). DNS parsers expect strict ASCII. Every mail server silently discards this record. Their email security is broken because a word processor tried to be smart.

Full TXT Record Value

“v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com include:spf.mandrillapp.com –all”