authentication

When Authentic Isn’t Real

Our Truemark service relies on email authentication (SPF/Sender ID or DomainKeys/DKIM) as a foundation for verifying legitimate messages. And there are some email services out there that indicate with an icon whether a message has passed authentication. But is email authentication by itself enough? Nope (you knew that was coming). Email authentication only tells me that the message really came from the entity who claimed to send it. That works great when someone pretending to be a bank uses the bank’s email address – the authentication will fail and the message can be dropped so consumers never see it. But what if [...]

A Rose By Any Other Name…

We mark thousands of domains in our Truemark service, representing more than 1700 companies. One of our biggest challenges (which is shared by companies themselves) is keeping up with all the domains used to send email. Most consumers would assume that email is sent from the main corporate domain (e.g., company.com), but that’s not the case. In reality, while there may be one main front door for web visits, there are usually many side doors (and windows, and vents, and…) for sending email. It varies by company: Large multinationals usually have domains tied to specific countries (e.g., company.co.uk, company.ca, company.fr) [...]