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<\/p>\nWe live in a world where millions of emails are exchanged every day. It\u2019s amazing that most of us use this technology without actually understanding what makes it work behind the scenes.<\/p>\n
Like any email users, you\u2019re probably painfully familiar with spam and phishing emails, which you\u2019d be receiving by the dozens if anti-spam filters weren\u2019t as good as they are now.<\/p>\n
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There are two things working behind the scenes to ensure that emails are delivered reliably \u2014 DKIM<\/strong> and SPF<\/strong>, and knowledge of these systems is important for anyone who sends out emails to customers and needs to ensure that these are in fact arriving to their destination. SPF works in the same way that DNS works to guarantee that you\u2019re on a website that is in fact what it claims to be. It works in a three-step process:<\/p>\n Creating a complete and accurate SPF record is very important for ensuring your messages are arriving reliably where they are being sent, and also that other messages that are pretending to come from you are being reliably blocked.<\/p>\n DKIM also works by checking the DNS record, but in this case, it uses a digital signature that appears in the header of the incoming email message. Here\u2019s how it works:<\/p>\n Basically, SPF and DKIM are not that complicated \u2014 they need to be set up correctly when you\u2019re setting up your outbound email server, and then kept up to date with any changes to your email delivery.<\/p>\n DKIM and SPF enabled on all CanSpace accounts by default. CanSpace also realizes how important it is that our clients emails are delivered correctly, so we actively monitor all our servers to make sure they are not on any DNS blacklists (DNSRBLs).<\/p>\n If you are having issues with your emails being delivered correctly by your hosting provider, check that they have enabled DKIM and SPF for your account, and check that the outgoing IP address of your server is not listed on any blacklists. Or better yet, switch to CanSpace!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We live in a world where millions of emails are exchanged every day. It\u2019s amazing that most of us use this technology without actually understanding what makes it work behind the scenes. Like any email users, you\u2019re probably painfully familiar with spam and phishing emails, which you\u2019d be receiving by the dozens if anti-spam filters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2933,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"client_name":"","client_title":"","client_company_name":"","client_url":"","client_quote":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[139,135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-email","category-hosting-servers"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nBasically, in the early days of the Internet, it used to be very easy to pretend to be somebody you\u2019re not and send a malicious message to a recipient who wouldn\u2019t think twice about opening it. It became clear that some further authentication was needed to prove that messages that say they\u2019re from someone are actually originating from that source. In medieval times, we had wax seals with each person\u2019s unique mark. These days, we have SPF and DKIM to do the same thing.<\/p>\nSender Policy Framework (SPF)<\/h2>\n
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Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM)<\/h2>\n
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