Who to contact about Tesla DMARC record issues?

Key findings

• Limited direct contact: Large organizations often do not have readily available public contacts for reporting DMARC or DNS misconfigurations.
• Conflicting records: The presence of conflicting DMARC records can lead to legitimate emails failing authentication, resulting in deliverability issues and potential blocklisting (or blacklisting).
• Third-party assistance: Leveraging relationships with DMARC service providers or industry experts can be an effective way to relay information to large entities.
• Impact on senders: Misconfigured DMARC records on a receiving domain can impact the deliverability of emails from legitimate senders, even if those senders have their own DMARC, SPF, and DKIM correctly configured. Learn more about how to troubleshoot DMARC failures.
• Reputational risk: An incorrect DMARC record can signal to the email ecosystem that a domain is not well-managed, potentially leading to trust issues and general email deliverability problems.

Key considerations

• Proactive monitoring: Always monitor your own DMARC reports to ensure your outbound emails are authenticating correctly. You can use our DMARC monitoring to keep an eye on this.
• Leverage networks: Utilize professional networks and industry forums where domain representatives or experts might be present.
• Publicly available information: Check for publicly available security contact information for the domain in question. This might include a postmaster or abuse email address as defined in RFCs.
• Understand the impact: Be aware that a major domain's DMARC issues can disproportionately affect global email deliverability, potentially even leading to your emails ending up on a blocklist or blacklist.

Key opinions

• Difficulty of contact: The primary challenge is the inability to directly contact the responsible department or individual within a large corporation to report the DMARC issue.
• Impact on campaigns: Misconfigured DMARC records can lead to legitimate marketing and transactional emails being rejected or quarantined, affecting campaign performance metrics.
• Community reliance: Marketers often rely on community forums and expert networks to share information and seek advice on how to handle such external deliverability blockages (or blacklistings).
• Workarounds: Some marketers consider temporary workarounds, such as segmenting recipient lists to exclude affected domains, though this is not ideal for long-term strategy.

Key considerations

• Reputational alignment: While you cannot control another domain's DMARC, ensuring your own DMARC, SPF, and DKIM are perfectly aligned is crucial for your sender reputation and avoiding issues on your end. See our guide on DMARC, SPF, and DKIM.
• Monitor your deliverability: Keep a close eye on your own email deliverability rates to specific domains that might be experiencing DMARC issues. Tools like Google Postmaster Tools can help with this.
• Document the issue: Gather clear evidence of the DMARC misconfiguration, such as screenshots of DNS records or email headers indicating DMARC failure, which can be useful if a contact channel becomes available.
• Impact on email security: Recognize that conflicting DMARC records can also be a sign of broader security vulnerabilities, potentially allowing for spoofing attacks against the affected domain. More on this here: Agent Tesla delivered by the same phishing campaign.

Key opinions

• Industry connections: Experts often rely on direct contacts within DMARC service providers or at the affected organizations to escalate issues that are difficult to report through public channels.
• Root cause analysis: Conflicting DMARC records typically point to fundamental misconfigurations in DNS, potentially involving multiple parties managing the domain's records. For more on this, see how to troubleshoot and fix SPF and DMARC settings.
• Scale of impact: A DMARC issue for a large domain can affect millions of emails, making it a high-priority concern for the broader email community.
• Importance of DMARC reporting: Properly configured DMARC reporting (through the rua tag) is crucial for domains to self-identify and correct such issues.

Key considerations

• Persistence is key: Resolving DMARC issues with large, unresponsive organizations often requires sustained effort and leveraging multiple channels.
• Technical validation: Confirm the DMARC record's conflict or error using reliable DNS lookup tools before attempting contact. Verify the TXT record setup (as DMARC records are DNS TXT records) for accuracy.
• Understand DMARC policies: Even with a p=none policy, conflicting records can indicate underlying problems that need attention. Consider the benefits of implementing DMARC for your own domains.
• Preventative measures: For your own sending, implement a robust DMARC strategy to protect your domain from spoofing and ensure your emails are authenticated, regardless of recipient domain issues.

Key findings

• DMARC record format: DMARC records are specifically formatted TXT records placed in DNS, which must adhere to a strict syntax to be interpreted correctly.
• Single record requirement: Only one DMARC record should exist per organizational domain or subdomain. Multiple or conflicting records will lead to authentication failures.
• Authentication standards: DMARC relies on the successful authentication of SPF and DKIM, and misconfigurations in any of these can lead to DMARC failure. Understand why emails get DMARC verification failed errors.
• Policy enforcement: DMARC policies (none, quarantine, reject) dictate how receiving mail servers should handle emails that fail authentication.
• Reporting mechanisms: DMARC provides aggregate and forensic reporting to help domain owners identify and resolve authentication issues, even for emails they didn't send. Learn more about DMARC reports from Google and Yahoo.

Key considerations

• DNS best practices: Adhere to DNS best practices, ensuring only one DMARC record is published per domain and it's correctly formatted to avoid conflicts. Always validate your records.
• Regular audits: Conduct regular audits of your DNS records to catch potential errors or unauthorized changes that could lead to DMARC issues. Setting up DMARC, SPF, and DKIM correctly requires ongoing attention.
• Email flow impact: Understand how DMARC records affect the email flow, including the interaction between sender, intermediate servers, and recipient mail servers during authentication.
• Security implications: Recognize that DMARC is a critical component of email security against spoofing and phishing, as detailed in various security documentation on SMTP Smuggling and similar threats.