Why did changing DMARC policy to quarantine send emails to spam, and how to fix it?

Changing a DMARC policy to 'quarantine' instructs recipient mail servers to place emails failing DMARC authentication checks (SPF and DKIM) into the spam folder. This commonly occurs due to SPF/DKIM misconfigurations, alignment issues between the 'From' address and authentication domains, uninventoried or unauthenticated email streams, or simply a misunderstanding of DMARC's implications. Experts and documentation recommend auditing sending sources, ensuring proper SPF/DKIM configuration and alignment, analyzing DMARC reports, using validation tools, and adopting a phased implementation approach (starting with 'p=none') to avoid unintended deliverability problems and protect against spoofing and phishing attacks.

Changing your DMARC policy to 'quarantine' instructs receiving mail servers to place emails that fail DMARC authentication checks (SPF and DKIM) into the recipient's spam folder. This typically happens due to misconfigured SPF or DKIM records, domain mismatches, or unauthenticated email streams. To resolve this, it's crucial to audit and correct SPF and DKIM records, ensure proper alignment between the 'From' address and authentication domains, identify all email sources, use DMARC reporting tools to diagnose issues, and consider a gradual implementation approach to avoid deliverability problems.

Changing DMARC policy to 'quarantine' can send legitimate emails to spam if not implemented correctly. This often stems from alignment issues, where SPF and DKIM records aren't in the same domain space as the visible 'From' address. A lack of understanding of all sending sources and misconfiguration of SPF/DKIM records are major contributors. DMARC reports are crucial for identifying failing mail streams. Experts recommend auditing all sending sources, ensuring SPF and DKIM alignment, and adopting a gradual approach to implementing DMARC, understanding the implications of each policy before publishing a DMARC record.

According to official documentation, implementing a 'quarantine' DMARC policy directs emails failing DMARC checks to the recipient's spam folder as a security measure. These failures frequently arise from SPF or DKIM misconfigurations, syntax errors in SPF records, or exceeding SPF lookup limits. Addressing these issues involves closely monitoring DMARC reports, analyzing aggregate reports to identify authentication failures, correcting SPF/DKIM configurations, checking DNS record accuracy, ensuring authorized sending domains, and verifying alignment between SPF/DKIM domains and the 'From' domain. Using SPF validation tools is also advised.