Cut down on spoofed emails with DKIM

You can now use DKIM records with your domain names, giving you an easy way to stop emails being spoofed from your domain name.

What’s DKIM?

DKIM is short for DomainKeys Identified Email, an email authentication method designed to detect forged sender addresses.

With this method, each email message has a digital signature in the headers. Mail servers can validate that signature using the public cryptographic key included in the DNS records for the domain.

Once you have DKIM set up, every email you send out will have a special signature that will be checked by your recipient’s mail server. If the signature matches up with the TXT record in your DNS records, your email gets through to your recipient. If not, it doesn’t go through.

Why should I use it?

DKIM helps make sure your emails are seen as the real deal by other mail servers. This is really helpful if you’ve ever had problems with your emails not getting through, your domain being used for spoofed email addresses, or even phishing attempts based on your domain.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean you’ll get less spam. But the more people who set up DKIM for their domains means more filters will pick up more spam.

How do I set it up?

If you have your DNS records with us, it’s easy to set up your DKIM record.

Log into your Sky Host  Control Panel and go to “Manage Hosting”.

Go to the Control Panel for the site.

In the Control Panel, click the “DomainKeys” icon under “Email”.

On the “Add DKIM Signature” page, select the domain you want to use, and enter whatever you want to use as the Selector. This can be a specific value, a name, anything – it’s just the way your record is identified in your files.

Click “Add Signature”.

Our system automatically creates the correct TXT record and adds it to your DNS records. Wait a bit for your DNS records to update, and then all your emails will be using DKIM.

If your DNS records are hosted elsewhere, check with your provider to see whether or not DKIM is possible for your domain.

Note: If you use third party DNS, you must add the DNS record that matches the default key otherwise your email will be rejected. Advanced options are available if you wish to fine-tune signing parameters.