What is DKIM and SPF related to email?
DKIM stands for Domain Identified Keys. This is a process where the mail server signs the email with a signature, which is also contained in your DNS records. When an email that is received is compared against this signature, a match would mean that the server that sent the email is authorized. You need a separate signature entry for each mail server that will be sending mail for your domain. The signatures are based on a public\private key hash.
SPF Records: These are records in your DNS which are a list of IP addresses or other sub dns records. If the IP addresses listed in any of these records match the senders IP address, then a match is confirmed, and the email passes. You can set up an SPF record to fail all non matches, or to just report the failure, and deliver the email. An SPF record is considered a TXT record in DNS.
- Sender Policy Framework (SPF) – detects whether you (the IP of the email) are allowed to send from particular domain (yours). It verifies you as the owner of the domain and is mainly designed to fight email spoofing (sending emails from a forged sender address).
- DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) – shows ownership of the email by a particular sender. It allows to link the domain to the email messages and prove its content hasn’t been changed during the transfer from the initial server to the recipient’s email address.
