emails and sender verification help needed

[wendyl]

When opening any email I get a sender verification message " error could not get SPF info DNS server refused TCP connection" in red (using XP)

Although it does not seem to affect anything I don't understand it I tried the The Thunderbird community forum (they solved another problem I had) but they say it is nothing to do with thunderbird but the server. I phoned the ISP but they could not help.
Can anyone one tell me how to remove it if I don't need it and what SPF and TCP stands for
any guidance gratefully received thanks

[plowter]

As I understand it SPF (Sender Policy Framwork) is an anti-spam feature. It's a check that the email address given by the sender matches the expected IP address range of the sender's host. It needs both the sender and recipient to support the feature for it to work.

These errors could happen if you're using your business email account elsewhere, at home for example.

What email client are you using? I think you just need to make sure you're using SMTP rather than SPF.

Am sure there are other AB'ers who can provide more detailed info.

[wendyl]

Thank you plowter for your response . I have only just found this when browsing technology it did not come through to me by email in the normal way.
I am on my own PC at present and this 'problem ' is on my husbands. He is retired and does not have any business email addresses and only uses one (unlike me ) Thunderbird advise SPF is not in their vocabulary so it is nothing to do with that and we don't use anything else. ISP couldn't help although they will always help if they can. At least I know what it stands for now, we are certainly using SMTP anyway and noone else has responded although I posted more than once