If you’re in the email marketing industry, you may have heard about DMARC. DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance. For additional information, I’d highly recommend the Agari site and their DMARC documentation and resources page on the topic.
From the DMARC.org site:
With the rise of the social internet and the ubiquity of e-commerce, spammers and phishers have a tremendous financial incentive to compromise user accounts, enabling theft of passwords, bank accounts, credit cards, and more. Email is easy to spoof and criminals have found spoofing to be a proven way to exploit user trust of well-known brands. Simply inserting the logo of a well known brand into an email gives it instant legitimacy with many users.
Users can’t tell a real message from a fake one, and large mailbox providers have to make very difficult (and frequently incorrect) choices about which messages to deliver and which ones might harm users. Senders remain largely unaware of problems with their authentication practices because there’s no scalable way for them to indicate they want feedback and where it should be sent. Those attempting new SPF and DKIM deployment proceed very slowly and cautiously because the lack of feedback also means they have no good way to monitor progress and debug problems.
DMARC addresses these issues, helping email senders and receivers work together to better secure emails, protecting users and brands from painfully costly abuse.
We sponsored and developed this infographic to assist email marketers to better understand both the problem as well as the value in adopting the DMARC specification. Special thanks to the entire DMARC team who helped educate us and provide the data utilized in the infographic!
