Last weekend, Yahoo.com made a security change to their domain that affects anyone sending email with the From Address of @yahoo.com that isn’t using Yahoo!’s servers to send the mail. Any email marketer that uses @yahoo.com as their From Address may have noticed their delivery rates plunge.
Yahoo.com made a change to their domain level policy called a DMARC record. DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance. DMARC combines existing technologies like SPF and DKIM, but goes a step further to help prevent spoofing and phishing attacks. Yahoo! users were under attack and the attackers were attempting to compromise end users’ Yahoo! accounts. Yahoo! implemented this DMARC policy to help protect their users from these attacks.
As a result of this change, any mail being sent with the From Address of @yahoo.com that isn’t sent out of Yahoo! mail servers is likely to bounce. This includes any mailing sent from a third party email service provider.
To avoid being impacted by this change when sending email marketing communications, make sure you are not using a From Address of @yahoo.com. It is best practice to use a From Address of your corporate domain (@yourcompany.com for example). If that is not possible, use a different free webmail provider altogether (gmail.com or hotmail.com are excellent alternatives). If you send with a From Address of @yahoo.com, your email will not be delivered successfully and you will notice a high bounce rate.
Example of Preferred Email From Addresses:
“Your Organization” <company@companydomain.com>
“Your Name” <you@companydomain.com>
“Your Organization” <you@gmail.com>
“Your Name” <you@outlook.com>
Example of an email address from name which we do NOT recommend:
“Your Name” <you@yahoo.com>
“Your Organization” <you@yahoo.com>
This Yahoo.com policy change is industry-wide. If you want to learn more about this issue you can review the blogs below to obtain more information.
- Yahoo Mail Brings the Pain with DMARC Policy Change
- Yahoo addresses a security problem by breaking every mailing list in the world
- Example bounces due to Yahoo p=reject
- A brief DMARC primer
If you have any questions or need help with this, please contact Net Atlantic at (877) 263-8285.
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