Email traffic categories

For contextualized recommendations and action items, your outbound email traffic is grouped into 4 categories depending on whether emails were accepted by the recipient, whether DKIM and/or SPF was present and aligned, and whether a confirmed PTR record was found.

Delivered and fully verified

Congratulations, this is the ideal scenario for your legitimate email traffic. SPF, DKIM, and PTR are correctly configured for your sources and your emails are DMARC compliant. With that, your email recipients can trust that emails come from you. If one of the verification methods fails in the future, the remaining method acts as a fallback, making sure emails still get delivered.

Caution: Since recipients don't reveal final placement (inbox, spam, or other filtering decisions), emails might show as "delivered" even when they haven't reached the inbox.

Action items:

  • If unexpected/unknown sources appear in this category, investigate.

Delivered after being forwarded

Emails from these sources passed DKIM but failed SPF alignment, probably due to forwarding or missing SPF setup. For some of them a confirmed PTR record may be missing.

If SPF is setup for all of your legitimate email sources, the emails reported in this section is out of your control.

Action items:

  • Make sure SPF is setup for all of the sources you control.

Delivered but lacking verification

Emails from these sources were delivered but are missing DKIM, SPF, or a confirmed PTR record.

Action items:

  • Setup DKIM for failing sources you control.
  • Setup SPF for failing sources you control.
  • Setup PTR records for failing sources you control.

Blocked

Emails from these sources were blocked by your DMARC policy due to failing both SPF and DKIM. This category will remain empty until you change from the DMARC policy none to quarantine or reject.

Action items:

  • If legitimate traffic moves to this category, investigate.
  • Monitor and report on potential abuse to network participants.


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