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12.1. Authentication 101
Updated 06.08.10
What is Authentication? We're glad you asked! It's an increasingly important process to help LEGITIMATE emails make it through the electronic sending process and land in the recipient's INBOX. At NewPanda, we bend over backwards to make sure we're up to date on the latest technology and techniques to keep your messages above-board and to keep us (and therefore you) in good standing with all the Email Service Providers out there.
A little background on why authentication is so important...
WAY BACK in the 1980s when email first got started, "email security" wasn't a consideration. If you got a message "from your bank," it didn't occur to you that the message may not really be from your bank. (And there were no systems in place to check to be sure that the message really WAS from your bank, anyway.) For a very short while, email was pure and simple and good, and there was no mistrust.
Those days are loooong gone, my friend. Fraud and SPAM are rampant and continue to increase, and email recipients (that would pretty much be everyone including you and me) work harder and harder to protect ourselves from viruses, malware and just plain old unwanted messages. Today processes are employed to catch and block abusers of the system as well as protect us as best as possible from harm. These processes continually evolve to keep up with the latest spam trends, technology and harmful stuff. But in a nutshell:
Authentication is a process that attempts to verify that a message is:
- Really from who it says it's from
- Not from a "blacklisted" sender (a known abuser or spammer)
SPF or SenderID Authentication: allows a receiver to reference a file on the "sending" server to verify the true identity of the "sender". In the NewPanda system, that would be OUR servers - and that's why we have all kinds of guidelines and rules about the Unsubscribe links, keeping your lists up-to-date, not emailing the same people every day unless they ask you to, not being too spammy, etc.
Read More about SPF authentication
Domain Keys and DKIM Authentication: attempts to verify the DNS domain of an e-mail sender and the message integrity. The DomainKeys specification has adopted aspects of Identified Internet Mail to create an enhanced protocol called DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). This merged specification became the basis for an IETF Working Group which guided the specification toward becoming an IETF standard.
Read More about DKIM authentication
Use of the DNS database to register authentication information for a domain is relatively new. The new information is added to existing DNS records, and queries for this information are handled the same way as any other DNS query. Publishing authentication records in DNS is voluntary.
NewPanda's authentication process covers all the bases so you don't have to be an authentication expert or go through extra steps each time you want to send a message. It's built in to our system because it's one more way we can make your life easier!
All that said, email authentication is not 100% fool-proof and can't guarantee that your messages will never land in someone's SPAM folder. See our Related Pages below for more information on designing and sending email messages for minimum SPAM complaints and unsubscribe rates, and maximum results.