Were developed, there was no need for verification and validation of messages. For the most part, the only organizations using email at the time were large corporations and educational institutions. Unfortunately, as email grew, malicious actors discovered that they could exploit recipients by sending malicious messages, spoofing domains, and sending spam. For example, someone could act as if they are sending on behalf of a trusted brand or sender and try to trick recipients into responding and providing personal and sensitive information.
Other senders used email to send spam to any address they could get their hands on, a practice that resulted in the can-spam act. Tip: email spoofing occurs when a company mailing list malicious actor crafts and sends emails to recipients from a forged email address. Learn more about why you should never send email from domains you don't control in our blog post don't send email from domains you don't control. Email authentication practices such as spf, dkim, and dmarc have been developed to prevent these types of malicious emails from reaching recipient inboxes. What is dkim? Dkim (domainkeys identified mail) is a cryptographic technology created by cisco and yahoo that senders can use to "Sign" their messages. Dkim allows the recipient of an email to verify whether that message was authorized and sent by the sender responsible for the domain.
When messages aren't signed with dkim, inbox providers such as gmail and microsoft can block messages and prevent delivery to recipients. How does dkim work? Dkim is a relatively simple form of email authentication because its only function is to verify that the sender of an email is responsible for the domain from which the email is sent and that they are responsible of the email content. The two steps for dkim are:a sender adds a private key on their mail servers and signs the message. The receiving server checks the public key stored in the txt record of dkimselector._domainkey.Domain.Com to validate the private key added by the sender. How does dkim prevent domain spoofing? As a brand, if you implement dkim,