Authenticating incoming email against spoofing

Plan requirement

Subscription Any plan
Access Admin

Checking that incoming mail really comes from who it claims. What it stops, and what it does not.

Turn it on

  1. Open the email settings in Admin Center.
  2. Enable authentication checks on incoming email.
  3. Watch what gets flagged for a couple of weeks.
  4. Adjust before enforcing anything strictly.

The problem it addresses

Email addresses are trivially easy to forge. Without checks, a message claiming to be from a customer creates or updates a ticket as though it were from them, and an agent has no reason to doubt it.

That is how somebody gets order details, or a password reset, for an account that is not theirs.

What the checks do

They verify that the sending server is authorised to send for that domain. A forged message from a domain with proper records fails the check and can be treated differently.

What they do not do

Nothing about domains with no records of their own, and nothing about a genuine account that has been compromised. Authentication proves the server, not the person.

Watch before enforcing

Legitimate mail fails these checks more often than you would expect: a newsletter tool, a partner's misconfigured server, a forwarding rule. Rejecting immediately means losing real customer email.

Observe first, then tighten.

Tell agents what a flag means

A flagged message is a reason to verify identity before acting on anything sensitive. That is a habit, and it only forms if somebody explains it.

See also

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