Preventing GMail from placing a grey octagon with a question mark in it next to your address in e-mails you send

LSoft seems to suggest that LISTSERV will make everything work just fine if you’ve independently DMARCd your email-sending domain. https://www.lsoft.com/news/dmarc-issue1-2018.asp

LSoft is to be thanked for making this clear: “Note that in order to make DMARC work properly, you must deploy appropriate SPF and DKIM records as well.”

So even though the GMail FAQ only required SPF or DKIM to authenticate sending domains (“DKIM preferred”) we might as well go full DMARC. The biggest thing DMARC offers, beyond more complete authentication, is actual feedback on how major e-mail recipients (thing gmail and all the people with gmail addresses) are interpreting and reacting to your authentication.

https://dmarc.org/

https://dmarc.org/wiki/FAQ

The DMARC FAQ confirms that LSoft (and Mailman) should work fine with DMARC.

Here is what the dmarcian.com record wizard gave me for a record:

v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarcreports@portside.org; ruf=mailto:dmarcfailreports@portside.org; fo=1;

with record type TXT and target/host/location _dmarc.portside.org

but despite asking about DKIM and SPF policies, it didn’t include records or information for setting them up.

However DMARC makes very clear you can start with monitoring only: https://dmarc.org/wiki/FAQ#Can_I_implement_DMARC_gradually_without_impacting_the_rest_of_my_mailflow.3F

So i’ve gone ahead and applied that record to portside.

Check that the basic setup is correct with https://dmarcian.com/dmarc-inspector/

For setting up DMARC for real, the best resource, with links to good resources for SPF and DKIM, is probably:

Not sure i’m ready for the DMARC guide for the federal government that our almost-namesake, Agari, produces.

So let’s go for the simplest intros i could find.

Google’s 2012 announcement of implementing DMARC had its GoogleBlog URL shortened to ’landing-another-blow-against-email’ which is how many feel, or felt, about it. You have to love the quotes from the L-Soft guy:

“Contrary to popular belief, DMARC is not a new Internet standard. It’s a pack of 800-pound gorillas who got together and decided to change the way email works just because they can and because they have a vested interest,” said LISTSERV inventor and L-Soft Founder and CEO Eric Thomas.

“And they use the word ‘spam’ to justify their actions like others use the word ’terrorism’. But DMARC will do absolutely nothing to reduce the amount of spam in people’s inboxes. All it does is prevent spammers from using a yahoo.com or aol.com account as their sender addresses, and I doubt any spammers are losing sleep over this.”

http://www.lsoft.com/news/2014/listserv160-2014a-us.asp