SPF/DKIM/DMARC Effectiveness

Discussions focus on the setup, usefulness, limitations, and issues with email authentication protocols SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for preventing spoofing, improving deliverability, and combating spam.

📉 Falling 0.4x Security
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Keywords

easydmarc.com DNS MailChimp IMO BGP SPF DKIM SMTP DMARC SPD dkim spf email mail sender gmail address spammers records domain

Sample Comments

megous • Jun 1, 2023 • View on HN

Having SPF/DKIM in DNS records doesn't prevent that.

mtpettyp • Jul 15, 2013 • View on HN

Isn't this the problem that DKIM is supposed to solve?

zahlman • Oct 9, 2025 • View on HN

I'd heard that the spammers are better at using DKIM correctly than legitimate users nowadays... ?

antihero • Jul 2, 2021 • View on HN

Do you support DKIM/SPF etc? Are these still useful?

amenod • Jun 4, 2022 • View on HN

No, would that help? I am however using SPF and one of DKIM / DMARC (I forget which). But anyway, I can live with a mail missing here and there. It is just annoying and isn't right.

thayne • Aug 25, 2022 • View on HN

You forgot about the mess that is SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.

motoboi • Mar 11, 2021 • View on HN

It needs DKIM so other people cannot send e-mail pretending to be you.

lorenzhs • Sep 3, 2020 • View on HN

You might want to set up a DMARC policy for your domain. Since I set mine to "p=reject" I haven't had any such issues. DMARC extends DKIM and SPF, and you (typically) need to pass at least one of those to pass DMARC.

throwaway2048 • Jan 28, 2018 • View on HN

spammers can and do trivially setup SPF, DKIM and DMARC

txtsd • Dec 8, 2018 • View on HN

My SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are on point. No idea why it goes to gmail's spam.