Suped

Summary

Protecting your domain from spoofing and subsequent blocklisting is crucial for maintaining email deliverability and brand reputation. Domain spoofing involves malicious actors sending emails that appear to originate from your legitimate domain, often for phishing or spam. While this may not directly blacklist your sending IP address, it can severely damage your domain's reputation, leading to legitimate emails being filtered into spam folders or outright rejected by recipient servers.

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What email marketers say

Email marketers often focus on the practical implications of email authentication, particularly concerning how different SPF policies are interpreted by major providers and the gradual process of DMARC implementation. Their primary concerns revolve around ensuring legitimate emails are delivered while mitigating the risks of domain abuse.

Marketer view

Email marketer from Email Geeks indicates that major providers like Google and Verizon treat both SPF ~all and -all as simply an SPF Fail. This suggests that the specific qualifier choice might not have a significant impact on deliverability with large mailbox providers.

21 Dec 2020 - Email Geeks

Marketer view

Email marketer from Email Geeks advises implementing DMARC with monitoring mode activated. This allows for observation of outgoing mail flow, authentication of legitimate servers with SPF and DKIM, and identification of fraudulent or spoofing attempts before enforcing stricter policies.

21 Dec 2020 - Email Geeks

What the experts say

Experts in email deliverability emphasize the limitations of basic authentication protocols and the necessity of DMARC for true domain protection. They highlight the complexities of mail flow and the importance of a nuanced, data-driven approach to security.

Expert view

Email Deliverability Expert from SpamResource highlights that while SPF helps, it's not a silver bullet against spoofing. Many legitimate email flows break SPF, and a strict SPF policy can inadvertently block good mail. DMARC is needed to provide policy on SPF failures.

10 Mar 2024 - SpamResource

Expert view

Security Expert from Word to the Wise asserts that DMARC is the most effective protocol for preventing domain spoofing and phishing attacks. It offers the ability to define policies that instruct mail servers to reject or quarantine unauthenticated emails claiming to be from your domain, thereby protecting your brand's reputation.

15 Feb 2024 - Word to the Wise

What the documentation says

Official documentation and RFCs provide the foundational technical specifications for email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. They outline the mechanisms by which these records verify sender identity and allow domain owners to influence how unauthenticated messages are handled.

Technical article

IETF RFC 7208 on SPF explains that SPF primarily verifies the MAIL FROM domain, not necessarily the From header domain, which is often what users see. This distinction is critical when assessing SPF's effectiveness against visual spoofing.

01 Apr 2014 - IETF RFC 7208 (SPF)

Technical article

IETF RFC 6376 on DKIM outlines that a valid DKIM signature assures the recipient that the email's content and certain headers have not been altered since the message was signed and that it originates from a domain authorized by the DKIM signing domain. This cryptographic verification adds a layer of trust.

01 Sep 2011 - IETF RFC 6376 (DKIM)

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