Authentication

Email authentication is the process of verifying the origin of emails to ensure they come from trusted sources. It plays a key role in reducing spam, helping Internet Service Providers (ISPs) accurately identify email senders, and improving email deliverability rates.

In this article, we‘ll uncover the need to authenticate emails and review email authentication methods.

Why do you need to authenticate your emails?

By authenticating your emails, you contribute to your company‘s reputation, security, trust, and deliverability. It allows you to do the following.

• Increase email deliverability. Authenticated emails are more likely to be delivered directly to subscribers' inboxes rather than being flagged as spam. By verifying your emails, you signal service providers like Gmail, Outlook, and others that your messages are from a legitimate source, improving your chances of reaching your audience and maintaining a strong sender reputation.
• Improve email security. By running email authentication, recipients can ensure that the source of the messages is reliable and legitimate. It helps reduce the possibility of fraud, phishing, scams, and other malicious activities. Moreover, authenticated emails are necessary for sensitive and transactional emails requiring people to share their passwords and payment details.
• Prevent phishing. With the rise of phishing and fraudulent emails sent by various organizations and individuals, protecting your domain has become essential. By implementing email authentication protocols, you can prevent unauthorized third parties from sending emails on your behalf. This helps safeguard your subscribers’ sensitive data and protects them from financial fraud.
• Boost subscribers’ trust. When emails are verified, subscribers are more likely to engage with your company. By being confident that messages are from your business, they have a higher level of trust and eagerly provide all the necessary details.
• Establish a strong brand reputation. Without proper email domain protection, scammers can exploit your domain for fraudulent activities, severely damaging your brand’s credibility and trust. This may lead to more unsubscribes and spam complaints. By authenticating your emails, you can safeguard your domain from being blacklisted and protect your reputation.

To overcome issues related to spam, phishing, security, and deliverability, the Internet Engineering Task Force accepts several email authentication protocols. We‘ll discover them in detail in the next section.

Email Authentication Methods

Email authentication methods refer to the technologies that verify an email’s origin, ensuring it comes from the trusted source or company it claims to be from. These methods help protect both senders and recipients from scams, fraud, and spam. Let’s explore the most commonly used authentication techniques to gain a clearer understanding of how email authentication works.

• Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM). This technology enables companies to authenticate the emails they send. It uses a cryptographic signature associated with a domain name rather than relying on a traditional IP address. To assess the sender’s reputation, "whitelists" and "blacklists" are used to identify trusted or potentially harmful senders.
• Sender Policy Framework (SPF). This technology enables companies to verify the sender of an email and assess whether the email flow includes spam messages. It helps classify emails as "permitted" or "not permitted" based on the sender's or recipient’s domain. When using a service like SendPulse, your emails are automatically authenticated with the platform’s digital signatures. However, you also have the option to configure your own DKIM and SPF authentication for added control.
• Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC). Based on SPF and DKIM, this protocol allows users to indicate what should happen to unauthenticated emails. They can choose whether these messages should be rejected, allowed, or quarantined. While using this method, businesses can monitor email activity and receive actionable recommendations for improving email security.
• Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI). When companies use BIMI to authenticate their messages, these verified emails usually contain brands‘ logos. It proves that the sender is legitimate and emails are authenticated. This technology allows businesses to boost visibility, recognition, trust, and credibility. When a visual confirmation of the business‘ origin is obtained, the company can be sure of interacting with the real brand.

Now that you know the main email authentication methods, it‘s time to find out how to check email authentication.

How to check email authentication?

To check if your emails are authenticated, the simplest method is to send an email to yourself. Choose the domain you want to test and then open the message header, which will provide all the technical details about the email. The process for accessing this information varies depending on your email provider, such as Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo. Once you have the data, look for authentication details to see which protocol was used and whether your email passed authentication. However, this isn't the only way to verify authentication. You can also use dedicated tools that provide a seamless way to check all the relevant details about your email and domain.

Overall, email authentication contributes to the secure sending of emails that bring no harm to both its senders and recipients. By running authentication checks, businesses can ensure proper deliverability, brand reputation, trust, and avoid spammy and fraudulent activities with their company names involved.

Last Updated: 12.12.2024