2024 Email Authentication Standards: Elevating Security with Google and Yahoo

In contemporary email communication, email authentication plays a pivotal role in mitigating email fraud, spam, and phishing attacks. Brace yourself for a new level of security. Starting February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo will be implementing robust email authentication requirements to combat harmful messages and emphasize the crucial role of data security. This measure aims to prevent restrictions on sending rates, message blocking, and marking messages as spam.

Who will experience the effects? 

The updated security guidelines apply to all users, particularly those who send 5000 or more than 5000 emails per day from ZOHO DESK. Not following these guidelines may lead to email delivery delays, blocked messages, or the categorization of emails as spam.

Not to worry. We are here to support you with the best possible solutions.

Basic details that every sender should be aware of

 

To safeguard your path in 2024, it is mandatory to follow the fundamental requirements, beginning with email authentications.

When utilizing a Gmail domain in the 'From' address, it is essential to configure the address with its dedicated SMTP for ensuring accurate mail delivery.

For recipients on gmail.com or googlemail.com, it is recommended to publish DMARC for the sender domain to enhance prompt mail delivery. 

Verify with your own SMTP 

In adherence to the new guidelines, reply emails sent from Zoho Desk with From addresses belonging to gmail.com, googlemail.com, to any domains may be bounced or marked as spam. Therefore, we kindly request all customers to configure these From addresses with your own SMTP verification and use TLS for transmitting email rather than Zoho SMTP. If the From addresses were verified previously with your own SMTP, we will continue using the same authentication for all notification emails sent from Zoho Desk.

Rolling out SPF & DKIM  

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) are vital email authentication protocols that protect against spam, phishing, and spoofing. SPF verifies the authenticity of emails from your domain, while DKIM confirms their source by validating authorized servers associated with sending domains. These protocols work together to validate emails, ensuring that they originate from legitimate sources and have not been tampered with during transmission. This implementation enhances the overall security of your email communications by reducing the risk of email spoofing, phishing, and other malicious activities. 

Minimal Spam Rate 

Maintain spam rates below 0.10% and ensure they never exceed 0.30% for optimal email deliverability.

More about Guidelines for all senders

Essential  Requirements for Users Sending 5000 or More Emails Daily 

Implement DMARC Policy 

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance) is an authentication technique that leverages the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) to authenticate emails. This helps in preventing forging emails and engaging in unauthorized activities through them.

 How DMARC Works: 

1: Publish the DMARC policy outlining instructions for mailbox providers' receiving servers on how to handle emails that breach the policy.

2: Authenticate your sender domain by implementing SPF and DKIM.

3: The receiving server will apply the DMARC policy and execute the instructions specified in the policy.

4: The receiving server will send a report detailing how it handled the email to the reporting email address specified in the DMARC record.

Sample: DMARC record

v=DMARC1\; p=none\; rua=mailto:dmarc-aggregate@mydomain.com\; ruf=mailto:dmarc-afrf@mydomain.com\; pct=100

v: Signifies the DMARC version in use.

p: Signifies the policy established by the business.

rua: Specifies the URI for sending a consolidated report, including information on SPF and DKIM validation results, details about the sending and receiving domains, and the percentage of successful authentications.

ruf: Specifies the email address where the comprehensive SPF/DKIM failure report will be delivered.

pct: Denotes the percentage of emails subject to the policy application.

To prevent emails from being marked as spam, bounced, or experiencing delays in delivery, it is mandatory to set your policy (p) to none in DMARC record. “p = none”

If the policy (p) is set to "quarantine" or "reject," the emails will either be redirected to the spam folder or will not be delivered to the recipient, respectively. 

Ensure DMARC Alignment 

DMARC alignment pertains to the uniformity in the alignment of email authentication mechanisms, particularly SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), with the domain asserted by the sender.

Sample DMARC - SPF Alignment

Sender Address	From: Header	Strict Alignment	Relaxed Alignment
support@mycompany.com	support@mycompany.com	Pass	Pass
support@admin. mycompany.com	support@mycompany.com	Fail	Pass
support@mycompany.org	support@mycompany.com	Fail	Fail

 

SPF Strict Alignment: A precise match between the SPF-authenticated domain and the domain specified in the header's "From:" address. 

SPF Relaxed Alignment: The domain indicated in the "From:" address of the header should either match or be a subdomain of the SPF-authenticated domain. 

Sample DMARC - DKIM Alignment

From: Header	DKIM d= domain	Strict Alignment	Relaxed Alignment
support@mycompany.com	mycompany.com	Pass	Pass
support@admin. mycompany.com	mycompany.com	Fail	Pass
support@mycompany.org	mycompany.com	Fail	Fail

DKIM Strict Alignment: A precise match between the relevant DKIM domain and the domain specified in the header's "From:" address. 

DKIM Relaxed Alignment: The domain mentioned in the "From:" address of the header must either coincide with or be a subdomain of the SPF-authenticated domain. 

Add ARC headers 

Implement ARC (Authenticated Received Chain) authentication to avoid Gmail categorizing the email as unauthenticated, especially when utilizing frequent mail forwarding practices.

For additional information on ARC authentication, please refer to the official Google document linked here.

Set up SPF & DKIM 

Mail authentication protocols such as SPF & DKIM should be implemented for organization sending emails to google or yahoo recipients.

Read more about Guidelines for Users Sending 5000 or More Emails Daily

What are the consequences if the deadline is not met? 

Adhering to the sender requirements before the deadline is crucial for optimizing email delivery. Failure to meet the criteria detailed in this article may lead to your email not reaching its destination as intended or being categorized as spam.

Quick Summary:

The Update - Gmail and Yahoo are implementing robust email authentication standards from February 2024.

The Effects - Failure to meet these requirements may result in emails being categorized as spam or not reaching their intended destination.

The Action to be taken - Users sending 5000 or more emails daily must implement SPF,  DKIM and publish DMARC policies. 

Regards,

Sumaya Howth - Product Manager

The Zoho Desk Team

• Topic Participants

• Sumaya Howth

  

• Stéphane LAMBERT

• Jeff | Zoho Desk

  

• Sticky Posts

• 2024 Email Authentication Standards: Elevating Security with Google and Yahoo

  In contemporary email communication, email authentication plays a pivotal role in mitigating email fraud, spam, and phishing attacks. Brace yourself for a new level of security. Starting February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo will be implementing robust email

• Using Agent Email Address as From Address

  Currently, while replying to a ticket, it is possible for agents to choose their own email addresses as 'from' addresses. Although we built this just for that little extra flexibility, in hindsight, it hasn't figured much in conventional usage.  Almost all businesses prefer that responses to their customers' tickets be sent from the common support/service email address and NOT from those of individual agents. During personal interactions at events, some of you have even made passing mentions about

• Edit and Delete options in Comments

  A lot of teams have been using ticket comments extensively to collaborate everyday. Notification Center further improved this experience by bringing real-time updates. As we continue to build more improvements to this experience, we've shipped a small-yet-important

• Webinar 2: Supercharged customer support for growing business

  Join us for this webinar and learn how to step up your support game using a real-time communication platform to generate happier, more successful customers. In this live webinar, we will will discuss the importance of SalesIQ for your support team and how it can help you:  Understand your customers better and their journeys to proactively support and engage them even before they ask for help.  Integrating real time conversations into Zoho Desk’s Support, providing a conversational customer service

• Customize Colors of your Customer Self Service Portal

  You asked for it. We heard you. We're happy to roll out the most sought after feature request, Customizing the Colors of your Customer Self-service Portal. Now you can set the color of your customer portal to mimic your company's web site, so that your customers visiting the portal will not feel alienated by the default theme.  Go ahead and configure the color of the header, tabs, fonts and background according to your needs. You can either choose between default color themes like Blue, Grey, Green

• Recent Topics

• Ability to Reset Visitor Fields During an Active Chat Flow

  Hello Zoho SalesIQ Team, We hope you are doing well. We would like to propose a feature enhancement to Zoho SalesIQ regarding the management of visitor fields within Zobot flows. Use Case: Our bot asks the visitor to provide information about a 3rd person

• External ID in Zoho CRM

  Hello everyone! We know that Zoho CRM allows you to integrate third-party apps and manipulate data through APIs. While you integrate a third-party application, you may want to store the third-party reference IDs in Zoho CRM's records. To meet this need

• Some emails are not being delivered

  I have this problem where some of my mail just seems to disappear. When I send it, it appears as sent with no mention of any problem, but my recipient never gets it, not even in the Spam folder. Same for receiving, I have a secondary e-mail address, and

• New in Zoho Chat : Search for contacts, files, links & conversations with the all new powerful 'Smart Search' bar.

  With the newly revamped 'Smart Search' bar in Zoho Chat, we have made your search for contacts, chats, files and links super quick and easy using Search Quantifiers.   Search for a contact or specific conversations using quantifiers, such as, from: @user_name - to find chats or channel conversations received from a specific user. to: @user_name - to find chats or channel conversations sent to a specific user. in: #channel_name - to find a particular instance in a channel. in: #chat_name - to find

• Template modifiactions

  Hello, I am struggling with the templates in ZOHO Books. Especially with the placement of some items, like company address, ship to, bill to etc.  For example: One item I like from template X (placement of ship to and bill to next to each other in the

• Aggregating the First Value in the Group By of a dataset

  Hi I am trying to get the following Aggregate Formula to work in my chart, but cannot seem to get the right format. I have a series of data that I am running an include_groupby and want to SUM only a column in the first row of each group. So for example.

• Track Zoho Campaign and Workflow sales impact

  I am attempting to measure the performance of our marketing workflows and campaigns by comparing the date each campaign was sent to a contact with the purchase date of the contact. For example, if Contact A was sent Email A on 9/1 and made a purchase

• What is a line break code for zoho?

  Hi, I am archiving data by adding values from a single line field from one form to a multi-line field in another form. So I need a code/function that starts a new line on that multi-line field so it does not just keep adding it on the same line. Example, doing something like this means that it will be on a same line. archive.field1 = archive.field1 + input.Field1 I need a code so the input.Field1 can just start on the next line. Instead of "value 1, 2,3,4,5" It will be: "1 2 3 4 etc.".  something

• Automatic Project Owner change

  Is there a way to change Project Owner automatically once a specific Milestone in a project is marked as completed. Different Teams are working on projects in our Org, they have their own Milestones to complete and so we transfer the project from team

• Button to add product to cart

  Is there a way to have a button on a page, that when clicked, will add Qty 1 of a product to the cart?

• Problem with Submit Button Design

  I have made a template to apply to my forms and under the button controls, I have it set to "standard" and yet it's still filling the container. This is super frustrating and looks weird. Why do we not have full control over button size? How can I fix

• Zoho CRM- Authorize your Microsoft Teams account issue

  Hi, I tried to link Zoho CRM with Teams and I got the following message: Clicking "Authorize now" sent me to the following page, Microsoft tried to start a session but, after 3 seconds the page closed and nothing happened. I get the same message each

• Is there a way to associate an email in ZOHO Main to a Vendor record in ZOHO CRM

  My situation is as below, I have a vendor in ZOHO CRM lets say "Vend A" and an associated contact, "Cont A" If Cont A sends me an email using the email I've registered in the contact record the standard OOTB email sync will work. But the vendor has some

• Kaizen #207 - Answering your Questions | Advanced Queries using COQL API

  Hi everyone, and welcome to another Kaizen week! As part of Kaizen #200 milestone, many of you shared topics you would like us to cover, and we have been addressing them one by one over the past few weeks. Today, we are picking up one of those requests

• Présentation de SecureForms dans Zoho Vault

  Soyons francs : demander à quelqu’un de transmettre un mot de passe ou des informations sensibles n’est jamais une tâche facile. On attend, on relance, parfois de nombreuses fois. Et quand l’information arrive, elle se retrouve souvent dispersée dans

• Introducing Connected Records to bring business context to every aspect of your work in Zoho CRM for Everyone

  Hello Everyone, We are excited to unveil phase one of a powerful enhancement to CRM for Everyone - Connected Records, available only in CRM's Nextgen UI. With CRM for Everyone, businesses can onboard all customer-facing teams onto the CRM platform to

• Granular Email Forwarding Controls in Zoho Mail (Admin Console and Zoho One)

  Hello Zoho Mail Team, How are you? At present, the Zoho Mail Admin Console allows administrators to configure email forwarding for an entire mailbox, forwarding all incoming emails to another address. This is helpful for delegation or backup purposes,

• Zoho Workdrive - Communication / Chat Bar

  Hi Team, Please consider adding an option to allow admins to turn on or off the Zoho Communication Bar. Example of what I mean by Communication Bar: It's such a pain sometimes when I'm in WorkDrive and I want to share a link to a file with a colleague

• Kaizen #190 - Queries in Custom Related Lists

  Hello everyone! Welcome back to another week of Kaizen! This week, we will discuss yet another interesting enhancement to Queries. As you all know, Queries allow you to dynamically retrieve data from CRM as well as third-party services directly within

• Need the ability to have read only fields on a form.

  There needs to be functionality in Creator that allows a field on a form to be read only. Most screen building software applications have this capability. I know you can hide certain fields from specific users and that you can also make the whole form read only but that's not the functionality I need. I want to be able to create a form where certain fields are editable and other are for display purposes only (read only). For example if the form was displaying information on an item that the user

• Reverse payment on accidentally closed invoice.

  An invoice was closed accidentally with the full payment added. However, only partial payment was paid. How can I reopen the invoice and reverse this to update it to show partial payment?

• New integration: Track booking page appointments in Google Analytics 4

  Hello all, Greetings from the Zoho Bookings team! We’re excited to introduce our new Google Analytics 4 (GA4) integration designed to help you track booking activity, understand customer behavior, and measure marketing performance, all in one place. What

• How to list emails in a folder, e.g. Inbox, on multiple pages when using Zoho mail webpage?

  Something as shown in the figure. There are totally 50 emails in Sent folder. If "Mail per page" equals 20, then the Sent folder is split into 3 pages. When I wander through Sent folder, I can just select a specific page to jump to. BTW, it seems that

• Zoho Calendar soft bounce on @hotmail.com and @yahoo.com email addresses

  Hello, our Zoho calendar recently does not send the calendar invites to emails with hotmail and yahoo domains and comes back with a "soft bounce". other domains like Gmail works fine. Also sending "email" to the same emails to the above domains work well

• ERROR CODE :512 - 5.4.4 DNS error:NXDOMAIN.

  Suddenly we cant send mail, we are getting this error for all outbound mail to multiple domains.

• Can Zoho Flows repeat Actions more than once?

  I'm attempting to make an intentional Zoho Flow loop using the below layout. However, when "WithinLimit" condition is met, the program fails to execute the action "Get & Add Request Co..." again. Is this by design? Is Zoho Flows unable to repeat actions

• Unveiling Cadences: Redefining CRM interactions with automated sequential follow-ups

  Last modified on 01/04/2024: Cadences is now available for all Zoho CRM users in all data centres (DCs). Note that it was previously an early access feature, available only upon request, and was also known as Cadences Studio. As of April 1, 2024, it's

• customer data security

  We are exploring ways to enhance our within Zoho CRM. Our Goal: We want to fully integrate RingCentral with Zoho CRM to enable click-to-call functionality for our sales team. However, to comply with data privacy regulations and protect customer contact

• Zoho Cliq not working on airplanes

  Hi, My team and I have been having this constant issue of cliq not working when connected to an airplane's wifi. Is there a reason for this? We have tried on different Airlines and it doesn't work on any of them. We need assistance here since we are constantly

• Sync CRM inventory data with Zoho Books

  I just switched everything over to ZoHo books, but I am trying to find out why the CRM Estimates, Invoices, and Sales Orders created in ZoHo CRM are not then duplicated in ZoHo Books? I had Quickbooks before, and had to do everything twice, I thought

• mask Customer phone number and agents cant see customer phone number

  Is there any way we can integrate Zoom Phone with Zoho CRM while ensuring that customer phone numbers remain masked? We need a solution where agents can make outbound calls but cannot see customer phone numbers. Please let us know if there is any solution

• Email Reminders on Shared Calendars

  How do we turn off the setting that emails reminders to everyone who has accepted or declined a calendar invite? If 8 of us have been invited to the same meeting, we receive 8 notifications for every step of the process, from invitation to decision.

• What's New in Zoho Inventory | Q2 2025

  Hello Customers, The second quarter have been exciting months for Zoho Inventory! We’ve introduced impactful new features and enhancements to help you manage inventory operations with even greater precision and control. While we have many more exciting

• How to refresh a ticket view ?

  I am doing a widget where I send a rest api call to make a new draft to the ticket I am viewing. The issue is sometimes it refresh a ticket view and I can see inserted draft right away, but sometimes I do not see it even if it is inserted correctly and

• Ugh! - Text Box (Single Line) Not Enough - Text Box (Multi-line) Unavailable in PDF!

  I provide services, I do not sell items. In each estimate I send I provide a customized job description. A two or three sentence summary of the job to be performed. I need to be able to include this job description on each estimate I send as it's a critical

• Merge Items

  Is there a work around for merging items? We currently have three names for one item, all have had a transaction associated so there is no deleting (just deactivating, which doesn't really help. It still appears so people are continuing to use it). I also can't assign inventory tracking to items used in past transactions, which I don't understand, this is an important feature moving forward.. It would be nice to merge into one item and be able to track inventory. Let me know if this is possible.

• Supervisor Rules - Zoho Desk

  Hi, I have set up a Supervisor Rule in Zoho Desk to send an email alert when a ticket has been on hold for 48 hours. Is there a way to change it so that the alert only sends once and not on an hourly basis? Thank you Laura

• ResponseCode 421, 4.7.0 [TSS04] Messages from 136.143.188.51 temporarily deferred due to user complaints

  Had email bounce. Let me know if you can fix this. Thanks. Michael

• Automation #15: Automatically Adding Static Secondary Contacts

  Rockel is a top-tier client of Zylker traders. Marcus handles communications with Rockel and would like to add Terence, the CTO of Zylker traders to the email conversations. In this case, the emails coming from user address rockel.com should have Terence

• New Zoho triggers Google Dangerous flag due toabnormal charcters

  Just signed up and doing my first email test. I sent it to my google email account but it got flagged as Dangerous" due abnormal characters. My DNS setup looks ok. Page snips attached Help Please Thanks, Rick DC PowerWorld

• Next Page