What tools and methods exist to monitor unauthorized brand use in email marketing?
Michael Ko
Co-founder & CEO, Suped
Published 23 Jul 2025
Updated 16 Aug 2025
8 min read
Unauthorized brand use in email marketing, often referred to as brand impersonation or phishing, is a significant threat. It occurs when malicious actors send emails pretending to be from your brand, using your logos, trademarks, and even your domain names. These fraudulent emails can mislead customers, damage your reputation, and lead to financial losses through scams or data breaches. Preventing and monitoring this unauthorized activity is crucial for maintaining trust and securing your digital presence. While a simple honeypot email address may seem like an ideal solution, the reality is that a multi-faceted approach involving specific tools and methods is necessary to effectively detect and mitigate such threats.
The challenge lies in not just identifying emails that use your brand's visual assets but also those that spoof your domain or leverage lookalike domains to trick recipients. This requires a combination of technical email authentication protocols and broader digital brand monitoring strategies. Understanding the various layers of protection and detection available is key to safeguarding your brand's integrity in the email landscape.
Understanding email brand impersonation
Email brand impersonation occurs when an attacker sends emails that appear to originate from a legitimate brand or organization, often with the intent to deceive recipients. This can involve using the brand's name, logo, visual design, or even email domain in a fraudulent manner. The primary goal is usually to commit phishing, distribute malware, or trick recipients into divulging sensitive information or making unauthorized payments.
Attackers employ various tactics, from direct domain spoofing where they falsify the sender's address to appear as your legitimate domain, to using deceptive sender names or visually similar 'lookalike' domains. These emails often contain urgent calls to action, fake invoices, or security alerts designed to panic recipients into clicking malicious links or downloading infected attachments. The consequences can be severe, including financial fraud, data breaches, and significant damage to the brand's reputation and customer trust.
Detecting these attacks requires vigilance beyond simply checking for your exact domain. It involves looking for subtle misspellings, subdomains, or completely different domains that nonetheless use your brand's identity within the email content or visual design. A comprehensive monitoring strategy must encompass both technical authentication checks and content-based analysis to catch these sophisticated threats.
Foundation of defense: email authentication protocols
The cornerstone of preventing unauthorized brand use in email lies in robust email authentication protocols. These standards help receiving mail servers verify that an email claiming to be from your domain is indeed authorized to send on its behalf. When properly implemented, they can significantly reduce the success rate of spoofing and phishing attempts.
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) is perhaps the most critical protocol. It builds upon SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) to provide a policy framework for email receivers. DMARC allows a domain owner to instruct receiving mail servers on how to handle emails that fail authentication and, crucially, provides aggregate and forensic reports about email traffic claiming to be from their domain. These reports are invaluable for identifying unauthorized senders and potential impersonation attempts. You can learn more about DMARC monitoring and its benefits.
Monitoring DMARC reports is a primary method for detecting brand impersonation. DMARC aggregate reports provide a daily overview of all emails sent from your domain, showing which passed SPF and DKIM authentication, which failed, and from which IP addresses they originated. This data allows you to see if any unauthorized entities are attempting to send emails using your domain. Forensic reports (if enabled) provide more detailed information about individual failed emails, which can be useful for investigation. For a deeper understanding, explore this guide to understanding DMARC reports. Implementing DMARC with a strong policy, such as p=reject, effectively blocks unauthorized emails from reaching inboxes. This is a critical step to prevent brand and sender profile impersonation.
To correctly configure DMARC, you'll need a DNS TXT record. Here's a basic example:
While p=none is a good starting point for DMARC, it's crucial to eventually move to p=quarantine or p=reject to truly protect your domain from unauthorized use. This transition should be done carefully, verifying all legitimate sending sources first. For more guidance, see simple DMARC examples.
While DMARC handles domain-level protection, unauthorized brand use can also manifest in the content of emails, even if they don't spoof your domain directly. This is where advanced monitoring methods become essential, especially for detecting rogue affiliates or phishing campaigns using visual brand elements.
Specialized brand monitoring tools are designed to crawl the internet, including email streams, to identify instances of your brand's logos, trademarks, and specific keywords. Some tools can analyze the visual elements of emails, similar to how they detect brand impersonation on websites. These tools can identify phishing kits that leverage your brand's assets, even if the sending domain isn't directly related to yours. This type of monitoring goes beyond typical email deliverability checks and focuses on brand abuse. You can explore a broader range of brand monitoring tools that offer this kind of functionality.
Another crucial aspect is monitoring abuse desk reports. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and security organizations often operate abuse desks where recipients can report suspicious emails. Services like Abusix collect and analyze these reports, which can reveal patterns of unauthorized brand use or affiliate fraud. If your brand's links or content appear frequently in these reports from unfamiliar sources, it's a strong indicator of misuse. Some platforms, like LashBack, specialize in monitoring affiliate email practices, ensuring they adhere to brand guidelines and legal requirements.
Beyond email, comprehensive brand protection also extends to monitoring newly registered domain names that closely resemble your brand (typosquatting), social media mentions, and even the dark web for discussions about your brand's potential exploitation. Companies such as Red Sift, Mark Monitor, and RiskIQ offer services to detect these malicious lookalike domains and broader trademark infringement across the internet, providing a holistic view of potential brand abuse.
DMARC reporting (technical)
Focus: Detects unauthorized use of your email domain (e.g., spoofing).
Mechanism: Leverages DMARC, SPF, and DKIM to verify sender authenticity.
Data source: Aggregate reports from receiving mail servers.
Benefit: Prevents spoofed emails from reaching the inbox when policy is set to quarantine or reject. Provides clear data on who is attempting to send using your domain.
Content-based monitoring (brand abuse)
Focus: Detects unauthorized use of brand assets (logos, trademarks) within email content, regardless of domain spoofing.
Mechanism: Utilizes content analysis, image recognition, and keyword scanning.
Data source: Honeypots, abuse reports, open-source intelligence, dark web monitoring.
Benefit: Catches broader forms of brand abuse, including rogue affiliates or sophisticated phishing using similar domains.
Implementing a comprehensive brand protection strategy
To truly protect your brand from unauthorized email use, a multi-layered strategy is essential. Relying on a single tool or method will leave significant gaps in your defense. It requires both proactive measures to fortify your legitimate sending infrastructure and reactive measures to detect and respond to abuse.
Beyond technical controls, educating your employees and customers about phishing and brand impersonation tactics is vital. Implement internal policies for email security and brand guidelines for all external communications, especially for partners and affiliates. Regularly audit your sending infrastructure to ensure all legitimate sources are properly authenticated. This includes making sure all your email vendors are correctly configured for DMARC enforcement.
When unauthorized use is detected, swift action is crucial. This includes reporting phishing attempts to relevant authorities and email providers, initiating takedown requests for malicious content or domains, and communicating with affected customers. While the goal isn't always to play whack-a-mole, a timely response can limit damage to your brand and customers. Regularly review and update your brand protection strategy to adapt to evolving threats. This also applies to monitoring for blocklist (or blacklist) listings, as unauthorized sending can lead to your domain or IPs being listed, further impacting your email deliverability.
Final thoughts on brand protection
Monitoring unauthorized brand use in email marketing is a complex but necessary task. While a direct "honeypot" service as initially envisioned might not be widely available, the combination of robust email authentication protocols like DMARC and advanced content-based and domain monitoring tools provides a powerful defense. By actively analyzing DMARC reports, leveraging abuse desk data, and employing brand monitoring solutions, you can gain visibility into how your brand is being used (or misused) across the email landscape. This proactive approach, coupled with strong internal practices, is key to protecting your brand's reputation and ensuring customer trust in a world where email impersonation is an ever-present threat.
Views from the trenches
Best practices
Implement DMARC with a policy of p=reject as soon as possible, after carefully monitoring reports to ensure legitimate email streams are compliant.
Set up and actively monitor your abuse@ and postmaster@ email addresses for direct reports of suspicious activity from recipients or ISPs.
Invest in comprehensive brand monitoring tools that scan across multiple digital channels, not just email, for misuse of your logos and trademarks.
Educate your internal teams and external partners (like affiliates) on proper brand usage and how to identify and report phishing attempts.
Regularly review your DMARC aggregate reports to identify new or unexpected sending IP addresses attempting to use your domain.
Common pitfalls
Sticking to a DMARC p=none policy indefinitely, which provides visibility but no enforcement against unauthorized spoofing.
Ignoring abuse reports or having unmonitored abuse@ and postmaster@ email addresses, missing crucial intelligence.
Focusing solely on email authentication while neglecting content-based brand monitoring, leaving gaps for visual brand impersonation.
Failing to track newly registered lookalike domains that could be used for phishing campaigns targeting your brand.
Not having a clear process for responding to detected brand abuse, leading to delayed or ineffective remediation.
Expert tips
"While DMARC reporting is a good start, it only covers domain spoofing. True brand impersonation often involves visual elements that DMARC won't catch. Consider tools that scan for brand assets and logos in email content, even from non-spoofed domains."
"Don't underestimate the power of direct feedback. Ensure your abuse@ and postmaster@ addresses are actively monitored. Customers and ISPs will often report suspicious emails directly to these aliases."
"For large brands, the sheer volume of DMARC reports can be overwhelming. Invest in a DMARC reporting service to parse and visualize the data, making it actionable and easier to spot anomalies."
"Sometimes, brand abuse comes from within, through rogue affiliates or partners not adhering to guidelines. Tools that monitor affiliate email creatives can be invaluable in these cases."
"Think beyond email headers. Many brand impersonation attacks use deceptive content and links. Your brand protection strategy needs to encompass detection of these elements across the broader digital ecosystem, not just the email channel."
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks says DMARC reporting is a key starting point for monitoring brand impersonation, as it helps identify unauthorized senders.
2023-06-06 - Email Geeks
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks says that DMARC reporting, combined with abuse reporting services like Abusix, can provide insights into unauthorized brand use.
