What are some good resources for learning about SPF, DKIM, and DMARC?
Summary
What email marketers say9Marketer opinions
Email marketer from StackExchange details that SPF and DKIM protect your emails, but they don't provide a unified way for domain owners to tell email providers how to handle unauthenticated emails. That is what DMARC does.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares a link to the M3AAWG DMARC training series: <https://www.m3aawg.org/activities/training/dmarc-training-series>.
Email marketer from EasyDMARC explains that SPF, DKIM, and DMARC work together to secure your email communications. SPF verifies the sending server, DKIM ensures the message hasn't been altered, and DMARC provides instructions to the receiving server on handling unauthenticated emails, creating a robust defense against phishing and spoofing attacks.
Email marketer from Reddit shares that you should configure SPF/DKIM in your DNS record of your domain. This is how you tell the mail servers that you've authorized the ESP to send emails on your behalf.
Email marketer from SendGrid emphasizes the importance of setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to protect your domain's reputation and improve email deliverability. The article details how these protocols prevent spammers from forging your domain and tricking recipients, improving overall trust and engagement with your emails.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares a list of blog articles about SPF, DKIM and DMARC: <https://www.sparkpost.com/blog/spf-authentication/>, <https://www.sparkpost.com/blog/dkim-validation/>, <https://www.sparkpost.com/blog/dmarc-howto/>
Email marketer from Mailgun explains that SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are essential email authentication methods that help improve email deliverability. The article outlines each protocol’s function: SPF verifies the sending mail server, DKIM adds a digital signature to emails, and DMARC tells receiving servers what to do with emails that fail SPF or DKIM checks.
Email marketer from Reddit shares that EasyDMARC is a great website to learn about DMARC and email authentication. They say it's especially useful if you are not technical.
Email marketer from Cloudflare highlights that SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are essential email authentication methods that help improve email deliverability. The article outlines each protocol’s function and provides a good overview.
What the experts say2Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise discusses common mistakes people make when implementing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. The expert says to pay close attention to the implementation details. Ensure that SPF records are properly formatted and don't exceed the lookup limit, DKIM signatures are valid, and DMARC policies are correctly configured to avoid deliverability issues.
Expert from Spamresource.com, a website dedicated to email deliverability advice, shares that DNS records are a crucial part of setting up SPF, DKIM and DMARC. They also say to ensure you're not exceeding DNS lookup limits or using invalid characters in your DNS records.
What the documentation says3Technical articles
Documentation from Microsoft explains how DKIM adds a digital signature to email headers to verify the sender's identity. It outlines the steps to set up DKIM for a custom domain in Microsoft 365, which involves generating DKIM keys and configuring DNS records to enable email authentication.
Documentation from DMARC.org provides an overview of DMARC, explaining that it uses SPF and DKIM to determine if an email is legitimate and specifies what to do with messages that fail authentication. It highlights the importance of a DMARC record to instruct recipient mail servers on how to handle unauthenticated mail, such as rejecting it, quarantining it, or delivering it.
Documentation from Google explains how SPF works to prevent spoofing by verifying the sending mail server. It details how to create an SPF record as a TXT record in your domain's DNS settings, including authorized IP addresses or domains that can send emails on behalf of your domain.