Having Email Authentication Issues?

Several months ago, we warned of pending changes to gmail, hotmail, outlook and a host of other services. That time is now. They are now requiring a SPF record, DKIM record, and are recommending a DMARC record. These are TXT entries made into your DNS server. If you have incorrect or missing entries, sending an email for delivery is either intermittent, or stops entirely.

Here are the 3 records, and what they do.

SPF SPF is used to authenticate the sender, and ensure that only specific, authorized servers can send emails for your domain. This makes it much harder for someone else to pretend to be you and send out emails in your name.

DKIM DKIM is used to verify that messages haven't been tampered with in transit. Because email is generally sent as a plain text, someone could intercept your email, change it, and release the modified version to an unsuspecting recipient. Think like a criminal. If you send out an invoice or bill, they could change the "send a check to" address. They'd get the payment due to you, you would not be paid, and your customer would still owe the bill amount. DKIM makes this much harder to accomplish.

DMARC DMARC suggests what to do with mail that isn't legitimate. It tells a sending server what is wrong with an email. You can set it to pass suspect emails, or delete them automatically. You can also set it up to alert you about suspect emails on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

For our customers, we automatically set SPF and DKIM, and upon request will set up DMARC.

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