Email authentication is the general term for technology that allows a mail server to determine if an inbound email message is authentic or not. In other words, it allows a mail server to determine if a message that appears to be from "joe.user@yahoo.com" really is from Yahoo, or if it was forged or spoofed (i.e. spam). Senders use email authentication to help improve the deliverability of their emails and ISPs use email authentication to help prevent spam and phishing attacks.
Email authentication technologies can be an alphabet soup, but the primary technologies used across the Internet today include:
- SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
- DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)
- DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, & Conformance)
Direct Mail handles these authentication technologies for you when you send via e3 Delivery Service. If you send via your own server, you'll need to configure your email server to support these technologies.
If the domain name portion of your “From Email” address is protected by a DMARC policy, you will need enable email authentication for your domain name in Direct Mail. You can also do this if you are interested in signing your emails with your own DKIM key and adding our SPF records to your domain name.