How can I use DMARC to prevent spammers from using my domain?
Summary
What email marketers say15Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Email Geeks advises to use a reporting tool to ensure all sources are aligned and passing before changing the DMARC policy to 'reject'. He emphasizes the importance of aligning the return-path with the friendly from and DKIM signing with the correct key.
Email marketer from Email Geeks explains that setting p=reject instructs mailbox providers to reject unauthenticated emails using your domain, but it doesn't stop spoofing attempts. He suggests that blocking the IP address of the spoofer is limited to inbound mail on controlled servers.
Email marketer from ZeroBounce shares that DMARC monitoring is a crucial aspect of implementing DMARC. By setting up and regularly reviewing DMARC reports, you can gain insights into how your domain is being used, identify potential spoofing attempts, and adjust your DMARC policy to effectively protect your domain.
Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum recommends starting with a DMARC policy of 'quarantine' before moving to 'reject'. This allows you to monitor how email providers are handling your email and identify any legitimate sending sources that are failing authentication without immediately blocking them.
Email marketer from Reddit explains that properly configured DMARC, SPF, and DKIM can significantly reduce the chance of spammers impersonating your domain. The user stresses the importance of monitoring DMARC reports to identify any unauthorized sending sources and adjusting the policy accordingly.
Email marketer from Sendinblue answers that DMARC is email authentication protocol, and without it, spammers can send email that appear to be coming from your domain. This damages your reputation, deliverability and customer trust. Implementing DMARC is essential to protect the reputation of the sender domain.
Email marketer from Proofpoint explains how DMARC improves email security. Implementing DMARC provides visibility into who is sending emails on behalf of your domain and allows you to enforce policies that prevent spoofing and phishing attacks. It also mentions that continuous monitoring and analysis of DMARC reports are essential for optimizing email authentication and maintaining a strong security posture.
Email marketer from Email Geeks details that DMARC aggregate reports contain data about the RFC5322.From header, including properly authenticated mail, unauthenticated mail, and spoofing attempts. He mentions that spoofed mail should fail authentication but could pass due to overly permissive SPF records or DKIM replay.
Email marketer from Email Geeks agrees with Todd Herr, stating that you cannot prevent emails from being sent on your behalf from uncontrolled servers, but DMARC can prevent them from being received.
Email marketer from Mailjet shares that DMARC protects your domain's reputation. By implementing DMARC, you can gain control over who is sending emails using your domain, preventing malicious actors from damaging your brand. Mailjet emphasizes that DMARC helps increase email deliverability rates by ensuring that legitimate emails are properly authenticated.
Email marketer from EmailToolTester explains that DMARC's best practice should be a gradual implementation strategy to monitor email traffic. By doing this you are ensuring legitimate emails are not being rejected, and also helping prevent malicious senders from damaging your brand.
Email marketer from EasyDMARC details the steps to implement DMARC, starting with setting up SPF and DKIM, then monitoring DMARC reports with a 'p=none' policy to identify legitimate sending sources. They recommend gradually moving to 'p=quarantine' and finally 'p=reject' once you're confident that all legitimate emails are properly authenticated, thus effectively preventing spammers from using your domain.
Email marketer from SparkPost shares that DMARC lets you specify policies for handling unauthenticated email, such as 'none' (monitor), 'quarantine' (mark as spam), or 'reject' (block). Setting a DMARC policy allows you to prevent spammers from using your domain by instructing receiving servers to reject unauthorized emails, protecting your domain's reputation.
Email marketer from GlockApps shares that DMARC is crucial for improving sender reputation and deliverability. Properly configured DMARC policies help ensure that your legitimate emails reach the inbox while preventing spammers from using your domain, thus boosting trust with mailbox providers and recipients.
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares information about DMARC aggregate reports being sent as individual XML sheets daily and suggests using a service to make sense of the data. He mentions the objective of ensuring all legitimate senders pass DMARC before enforcing a 'p=reject' policy and touches on inbound enforcement considerations.
What the experts say2Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise shares that implementing DMARC allows you to protect your brand from email spoofing and phishing attacks by controlling how recipient servers handle unauthenticated email claiming to be from your domain. The expert also says that you need to monitor the emails, start in monitoring mode, and then advance to stricter protocols.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that you can set the DMARC policy to 'reject', instructing recipient servers to refuse any email that fails authentication checks. This prevents spammers from successfully spoofing your domain, but requires careful setup and monitoring to avoid blocking legitimate mail.
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from RFC Editor (RFC7489) specifies that DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is designed to allow domain owners to indicate that their messages are protected by SPF and/or DKIM, and to give instructions if neither of those authentication mechanisms pass. DMARC defines how email receivers should handle failures, thus preventing spammers from using the domain.
Documentation from DMARC.org details how DMARC allows domain owners to specify how email receivers should handle unauthenticated email purporting to be from their domain. It clarifies that by publishing a DMARC policy, you can instruct receivers to quarantine or reject messages that fail authentication, significantly reducing the effectiveness of spoofing attacks.
Documentation from Agari by HelpSystems explains that DMARC builds upon SPF and DKIM. You should first make sure that these other two protocols are properly setup, so the domain's email is secure and is correctly validated. Implementing DMARC provides the visibility and the steps needed to make sure the emails are correctly authenticated.
Documentation from Google Workspace Admin Help explains that creating a DMARC record and publishing it to your domain's DNS records will help receiving servers handle messages from your domain. It outlines the importance of DMARC in telling receiving mail servers what to do with messages that fail authentication checks (SPF and DKIM), either reject them or mark them as spam.
Documentation from Microsoft Learn explains how to use DMARC with Microsoft 365. Implementing DMARC helps prevent spoofing and phishing by allowing organizations to specify what happens to messages that fail SPF or DKIM checks. It also emphasizes the importance of monitoring DMARC reports to identify and address any legitimate sending sources that are not properly authenticating.