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.