To protect your domain and online identity from fraudsters who try to impersonate you, you need to set up DMARC for your email domain. DMARC works by accumulating e-mail authentication through SPF and DKIM protocols. Later, DMARC users can also benefit from receiving reports about their email delivery problems, authentication and alignment failures.Learn more about What is DMARC here.
If your DMARC summary report shows “SPF alignment failed”, let us discuss what it means to align your SPF and how to resolve this issue.
What is SPF calibration?
An email consists of several different headers. Each header contains information about certain attributes of the email message, including the date it was sent, where it was sent, and to whom it was sent. SPF processes two types of email headers:
- Return path header
When the domain in the From: header and the domain in the return path header match the email, the email will be aligned by SPF. However, when the two do not match, it fails. SPF alignment is an important criterion for determining whether an email message is legal.
Shown above is an example where the From: header is aligned with the Return-path header (Mail From) (exact match), so this email will be aligned by SPF.
Why does SPF alignment fail?
Situation 1: Your SPF calibration mode is set to strict
Although the default SPF alignment mode is loose, if the return path domain happens to be a subdomain of the root organization domain and the From: header contains the organization domain, setting a strict SPF alignment mode may cause alignment failure. This is because for SPF to align in strict mode, the fields in the two headers must match exactly. However, for loose alignment, if two domains share the same top-level domain, the SPF alignment will pass.
Shown above is an example of emails that share the same top-level domain but the domain name does not exactly match (the Mail From domain is a subdomain of the organization domain company.com). In this case, if your SPF alignment mode is set to “loose”, your email will be aligned by SPF, but for strict mode, it will also fail.
Case two: Your domain name has been Deceived
A very common reason for SPF alignment failure is pharming. This is a phenomenon in which cybercriminals take over your identity by forging your domain name or address and sending emails to your recipients. Although the From: domain still carries your identity, the Return-path header shows the original identity of the spoofer. If you perform SPF authentication on the fake domain, the email will inevitably not be aligned on the recipient’s side.
The example shown above is an example where the From: header and the Return-path header (Mail From) are not aligned (do not match), so the SPF alignment of the email failed.
Fix “SPF alignment failed”
To fix SPF alignment failure, you can:
- Set the alignment mode to “loose” instead of “strict”
- Configure DMARC for your domain on top of SPF and DKIM so that even if your email is not aligned by SPF header and aligned by DKIM, it will pass DMARC and be sent to your recipient
our DMARC report analyzer It can help you obtain 100% DMARC compliance in outgoing emails and prevent fraud attempts or alignment failures caused by protocol configuration errors. Try DMARC for free now and enjoy a safer and more reliable authentication experience!
