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SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a protocol that determines whether an email comes from a server authorized to use a particular domain name to deliver emails by comparing its IP address with a list of addresses published in the DNS of the domain of the SMTP envelope of the email.
The following diagram provides an overview of how it works:
The SMTP envelope is like the return address on a postal envelope: it is an address that is potentially different from the address indicated in the header of the letter contained in the envelope.