Do you really know what happens when you send an email? How does your email get to the address you have sent it to? Most people don’t understand email and how messages make it from your computer to your recipient when you press ‘Send.’ The information that people should know about emails is not hard to find but not checking can have consequences. This article provides you with important information you should know about email.
‘Octagon Technology understands email like others understand stamps.’
The journey of your email once you hit the Send button
You’ve typed in your message, added a recipient address and clicked on the Send button then your email travels across the Internet using a protocol called SMTP – Simple Mail Transport Protocol.
An email server is responsible for collecting mail from your computer or device. When you click on the Send button your computer connects to an SMTP server. It then looks up on a DNS server, “Domain Name Service”, for a pointer called an MX record which tells the email where to send itself to. For example, the MX record for safe@email.com points to the server called mail.email.com. Your SMTP server then sends the message to your recipient mail server mail.email.com. Once received by mail.email.com this server checks to see where the email has come from by sending a query back to the original DNS server. This is where the SPF record “Spam Policy Framework” comes in.
The SPF Record is a text file located on your domain name that tells other domains which email servers are permitted to send email on your behalf. If this is incorrect and the email server that your email came from is not in the list then your email will be bounced back as SPAM. It is very important that this record contains all the email servers authorised to send mail on your behalf. Otherwise your email will not get to where it is supposed to go.
The reason this is now an industry standard is to cut down the amount of Phishing email. This is an email that appears to be from someone you know but they didn’t actually send it – hackers use this technique to distribute viruses.
More and more suppliers are turning on a facility called Hard Fail. It means for whatever reason your SPF record is wrong or has the wrong word at the end it will fail. There are a lot of companies out there that are not compliant and it needs to be addressed or email will simply start to disappear.
If the SPF is fine your email will be delivered to the recipient providing your email server hasn’t been flagged on a blacklist due to sending out spam. Again this would be helped by the SPF system being correct. Don’t forget all this happens at the speed of light!
When your recipient replies, the situation reverses.
If you would like to obtain more information about how to improve your sensitive data safety, backup options for your business, IT training for your staff or any other IT related topics then please get in touch with me on 01522 797520 or info@octagontech.com.
Kamila
