Recent adoption of DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) Policy by many email providers such as Google, Yahoo!, and AOL this week has dramatically affected anyone who has their email forwarded to an external account, such as to another GMail, Yahoo!, or AOL account. This policy will result in users no longer being able to receive forwarded emails originally sent from any of these domains. This includes Mailing Lists that they may be subscribed to, or any Contact Us, Order Confirmations, or Password Recoveries that are sent using a Google, Yahoo!, or AOL address in the FROM: field of an email. There is regrettably nothing that we can do about this as this is an internal policy change at these providers that causes emails addressed with their domain not coming directly from their domain to be outright rejected or deleted.

DMARC policy is meant to help an email provider or domain holder protect its users from Phishing spam. However, overly restrictive implementations of DMARC can have adverse effects as well. Scarab Media, Project A Inc. is not alone in recognizing these limitations. Security Analysts and other providers alike have felt the repercussions caused by restrictive DMARC policies. (ZDNet Article: AOL Yahoo! Email Problems Show Limits of Email Security)

The only remedy now, and in the future, would be simply not use email forwarding. If you want to retrieve your email from an external account, such as GMail or Yahoo! then you can setup those accounts to remotely retrieve email from your email account hosted at Scarab Media, Project A Inc. Almost all email providers allow for POP3 Retrieval of an external account. For instructions on how to set POP3 Retrieval please see the Knowledge Base Article “Not Receiving Forwarded Emails“.

As far as Contact Us, Order Confirmations, and Password Recoveries sent from your website, these would have to be modified to always use the Website’s Administrative or Technical Contact in the FROM: field and not the Customer’s email address. If you need assistance in modifying your website to submit DMARC compliant emails, feel free to contact us at support@scarabmedia.com.