Friday, 28 February 2014

Module 1: DKIM & SPF Records

Posted by Unknown at 9:36 am Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
These types of abbreviations and acronyms are all well and good to tech-types and cyber geeks, but what do they really mean and will they be of any benefit to you, the user?

The answer simply is....YES!

Although these sound like jargon and ‘far too techie for me’ they are quite simple to implement and can give a great increase to your deliverability and open rates – potentially increasing your ROI1 (oops there we go again! But at least we’ve created a legend at the bottom to assist with these necessary Jargons)

The Sender ID, most commonly known as an SPF2 record, is a record that you can add to your DNS3 which will tell the receiving ISP4 that “xyz.com” can send emails on behalf of your domain. The SPF is supported by large ISP’s including Windows Live Mail and AOL5 among others and has been designed to prevent spam emails by detecting email spoofing, a common vulnerability, by verifying sender IP addresses6.

DKIM7 / Domain Keys send a public key along with every email we send out. That public key is matched with a private key stored on your domain which is then verified and confirms we can send emails on your behalf. Our DKIM record is also supported by large ISP’s such as Yahoo Mail, Gmail and many more email clients. Without these keys some emails may be wrongly identified as spam as this is a common trick used by spammers to have their emails read, by pretending to be someone they aren’t. Such as a group of people in Nigeria pretending to be Paypal to obtain your username and password.

That’s the end of the Jargon, now here’s the explanations ...

1ROI: Stands for Return On Investment
2SPF: Sender Policy Framework is an email validation system designed to prevent email spam by detecting email spoofing, a common vulnerability, by verifying sender IP addresses.
3DNS: Stands for the Domain Name System. The DNS records tell the internet where to send your internet traffic.
4ISP: Internet service provider is a company that offers internet access and related services to its clients.
5AOL: Stands for America Online, an internet service provider
6IP address: Internet Protocol is a unique string of numbers separated by full stops that identifies each computer using the Internet Protocol to communicate over a network.
7DKIM: Domain Keys Identified Mail defines a domain-level authentication framework for email using public-key cryptography and key server technology to permit verification of the source and contents of messages by either Mail Transfer Agents (MTAs) or Mail User Agents (MUAs)
SPAM: Irrelevant or unsolicited messages sent over the Internet, typically to large numbers of users, for the purposes of advertising, phishing, spreading malware, etc.

We can help you generate these keys which you will need to add to your DNS record. You also have the chance to generate them yourself and add them into your GraphicMail paying account. Using both of these features will help you  to ensure successful delivery of your email, so you won’t need to worry about your emails landing in your recipient’s junk mail or not being received at all.
If you find these advanced features could be of a benefit to your email delivery, you can use the steps provided below to set them up.

Setting up your SPF record:
In the “Advanced Mail” section of your account, go to “Setup & Option” >> “Advanced Setting”
Expand the “SPF records / Sender ID” option >> Insert your email domain into the space provided and press “Generate SPF records”

Setting up your DKIM record:
In the “Advanced Mail” section of your account, go to “Setup & Option” >> “Advanced Setting”
If you are using our system to generate this for you, expand the option “DKIM/ Domain Keys” >> Insert your email domain and press “Generate DKIM record”

If you would like any further information on the DKIM & SPF record you can also view our Help Guide provided in all GraphicMail Accounts.



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