What information is contained in DMARC RUA and RUF reports?
Summary
What email marketers say10Marketer opinions
Email marketer from EasyDMARC.com shares that DMARC RUA reports are essential for monitoring your email authentication status and ensuring that your legitimate emails are being properly authenticated. They help you identify any unauthorized use of your domain and take corrective action.
Email marketer from Valimail explains that DMARC Forensic Reports (RUF) contain copies of individual emails that failed authentication. This data helps diagnose and resolve authentication issues, as well as identify potential spoofing and phishing attacks.
Email marketer from mailhardener, states that RUF reports provide information such as sending IP address, envelope from and envelope to addresses, the subject and even a copy of the email body. Note that RUF reports can expose personally identifiable information, RUF is not widely adopted.
Email marketer from Reddit explains that RUA reports can be incredibly helpful in understanding where your email traffic is coming from, which services are sending email on your behalf, and whether those services are properly authenticating your email. The reports contain the source IPs.
Email marketer from EasyDMARC.com explains that while DMARC RUF reports provide detailed information about individual email failures, they are not widely supported by email providers due to privacy concerns and the potential for abuse. Therefore, relying solely on RUF reports may not provide a complete picture of your email authentication landscape.
Marketer from Email Geeks explains that Microsoft RUA reports include the “envelope_to” and “envelope_from” domains (but not the local parts of the addresses) in the “identifiers” section of each record, while other large mailbox providers do not. They also added that Almost nobody sends RUF reports
Email marketer from Valimail.com shares that DMARC Aggregate Reports (RUA) offer an organized view of your DMARC compliance. These reports are generated and sent by email receivers (ISPs) to the address specified in your DMARC record, providing insight into the authentication status of emails using your domain.
Marketer from Email Geeks mentions that “envelope_from” should/would be the same as the “domain” in the SPF auth_result section, and the “envelope_to” is captured by the report name, with one report per recipient domain.
Email marketer from StackExchange recommends using a DMARC reporting service that analyses the data provided in RUA reports. Also it is important to consider that very few email providers actually send RUF reports.
Email marketer from mailhardener, shares that DMARC RUA can show you which third-party services and IPs are sending emails that use your domain, and helps you determine whether those emails are properly authenticated and aligned with your DMARC policy.
What the experts say6Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks confirms that email contents are not included in DMARC reports, but that the to: address can be determined.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that RUA reports provide aggregated data about email authentication results, including SPF, DKIM, and DMARC pass/fail rates, helping domain owners understand the authentication landscape of their email traffic.
Expert from Spam Resource clarifies that RUF reports, if implemented, contain forensic information about emails failing authentication, including message headers and potentially the message body, enabling identification of the source and nature of the authentication failures. However, they are rarely used in practice.
Expert from Word to the Wise clarifies that RUF reports(forensic reports) contain details of individual emails that failed authentication. This can include message headers and a portion of the email body. This level of detail is not very common.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that RUA reports (Aggregate reports) provides a high-level view of how your email is being handled, this helps domain owners understand the authentication status of their email.
Expert from Email Geeks states that DMARC RUA reports do not contain the information requested. They clarify that RUF reports might contain more identifying information, but are rarely used.
What the documentation says6Technical articles
Documentation from DMARC.org details that RUF (Forensic) reports, also known as failure reports, contain information about individual email messages that failed authentication. These reports include the message headers and a portion of the body, providing more granular detail for troubleshooting authentication failures and identifying potential abuse.
Documentation from AuthSMTP explains that Aggregate reports provide a daily summary of all email traffic claiming to be from your domain. It includes the number of emails that passed and failed DMARC checks, as well as the reasons for failure. This allows you to identify potential issues with your email authentication setup.
Documentation from RFC7489 details that Aggregate Feedback reports contain: `<feedback>`, `<report_metadata>`, `<policy_published>`, and one or more `<record>` blocks. Each record block has `<row>`, `<policy_evaluated>`, and `<identifiers>`
Documentation from DMARC.org explains that RUA (Aggregate) reports provide a high-level overview of email authentication results, showing the percentage of messages passing or failing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. These reports help domain owners understand how their email is being authenticated across different receiving domains.
Documentation from AuthSMTP details that Forensic reports, also known as failure reports, provide detailed information about individual emails that failed the DMARC check. This includes the source IP address, the headers of the email, and the reason for failure, which can help to identify and mitigate abuse of your domain.
Documentation from RFC7489 details that Failure reports in Authentication Failure Reporting contain the failed message as an attachment in `message/rfc822` format