What is DMARC? How to setup DMARC records?

By Farhan Danish | March 1, 2025

Table of Contents

What is a DMARC policy? – DMARC is short for (Domain based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) it is an email authentication protocol. It will protect email from illegal use, such as spoofing or phishing. As a domain owner, you can enforce a policy for your DMARC record to define what should happen to emails that fail DMARC authentication checks.

It acknowledges domain owners to specify which email authentication mechanisms (such as DKIM & SPF) are used for their domain, and tells what steps should be taken if an email fails those checks.

DMARC helps in:

Protecting your domain from unauthorized use (such as spoofing or phishing).
Reporting on email activity to help understand how emails from your domain are being handled by other mail servers.
Setting policies for how email servers should respond to emails that fail SPF or DKIM checks.

DMARC Record Structure:

A DMARC record is typically added as a TXT record in the DNS zone for your domain. It looks something like this:

v=DMARC1;p=none;pct=100;rua=mailto:[email protected];ruf=mailto:[email protected];ri=86400;fo=1;

There are three different policies to choose from:

None
It will take no action on the email and it delivers to the recipient as you set it as none. This policy will be suitable for those who are not familiar with DMARC reports
Quarantine
It will check and mark the email as spam and send it to the recipient’s spam/junk folder. This allows recipients to check and review the spam email and identify legitimate emails.
Reject
It rejects the emails. With this policy, emails usually return bounced mail