What are the requirements for RUA and RUF in DMARC policies?
Summary
What email marketers say10Marketer opinions
Marketer from Email Geeks suggests only removing RUA for dedicated subdomains if you're 100% sure that subdomain is only used for a single source and it's configured.
Email marketer from AuthSMTP says the RUA tag specifies an email address to send daily reports about your domain's DMARC status and the RUF tag provides the ability to receive reports on individual email failures but is not commonly used.
Email marketer from Mailhardener indicates that RUA reporting provides insights into the overall health of email authentication, while RUF reporting provides forensic data. However RUF reports are rarely sent due to privacy concerns and implementation challenges. RUA is therefore more universally supported and essential for DMARC.
Email marketer from Stack Overflow community wiki says that RUA tags defines where to send the aggregated reports (daily) and RUF tag defines where to send the forensic reports (real-time).
Marketer from Email Geeks explains that if you have DMARC at policy p=reject, then email providers will not be looking for RUA tag at all, particularly when senders dedicate separate subdomains for email sending.
Marketer from Email Geeks states that neither RUA nor RUF are required, but RUA is strongly recommended because it prevents flying blind.
Email marketer from Reddit indicates that RUA is more important than RUF because RUF reports often contain personally identifiable information (PII) and are therefore often suppressed or unavailable. RUA provides sufficient data for most analyses.
Email marketer from URIports recommends setting up both RUA and RUF, but prioritizes RUA for getting an overview. They also point out that the RUF is more useful for detailed troubleshooting but requires more careful handling of data.
Marketer from Email Geeks explains that RUF (Forensic) reports can leak personal data, making them often useless after data trimming. RUA (Aggregate) reports provide the necessary information for most situations.
Email marketer from EasyDMARC states that RUA is essential for monitoring DMARC compliance and identifying potential issues, while RUF is less commonly implemented due to privacy implications and the sensitive data it might contain.
What the experts say2Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks agrees RUA is more important than RUF and that Yahoo is "strongly recommending" having an RUA address.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that DMARC implementation requires organizations to receive and analyze aggregate reports (RUA) to understand how their emails are being handled. Forensic reports (RUF) are less critical due to privacy concerns but can assist in identifying specific abuse instances if utilized properly.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from Proofpoint (formerly Agari) details that RUA provides aggregated reports of DMARC assessment results, while RUF provides forensic reports of individual email failures. RUF is less commonly used due to privacy concerns.
Documentation from DMARC.org explains that 'rua' specifies the URI(s) to which aggregate feedback reports should be sent and 'ruf' specifies the URI(s) to which forensic (failure) feedback reports should be sent. They are comma separated lists of mailto: URIs.
Documentation from Google Workspace Admin Help explains that the 'rua' tag specifies where aggregate reports about DMARC results should be sent. The value should be a mailto: URI. This report provides a summary of email traffic using your domain.
Documentation from Microsoft Learn indicates that DMARC reporting involves RUA for aggregate reports and RUF for forensic reports. Aggregate reports give summaries, while forensic reports are for identifying specific mail flow issues.