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RUA vs RUF - A detailed explanation of different DMARC report types

Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2025 10:41 am
by mdabuhasan
The DMARC protocol provides wide-angle visibility into the activities of email-sending domains, helping you track their malicious and illegitimate use. This improves email security and ensures good deliverability while keeping phishers and spammers out.

There are two types of reports that are sent to you, to give you a quick overview: DMARC RUA vs. RUF . RUA and RUF reports are also known as summary reports and forensic reports, respectively. This guide will discuss the main differences between them and how they work.

However, please note that in order to understand buy bulk sms service RUA and RUF reports and start receiving them, you first need to create a DMARC record and publish it to the DNS for your domain.

What is a DMARC RUA report?
DMARC RUA reports contain information about your domain's email traffic. When you create a DMARC report, you set a DMARC policy (None, Quarantine, or Reject) to instruct recipient servers how to handle illegitimate emails from your domain. Therefore, when emails sent from your domain fail SPF and/or DKIM authentication checks, the receiving server generates a DMARC RUA report to notify you of the failure. The report is sent to a pre-specified RUA URI.

What does a DMARC RUA report contain?
Here is an RUA report:

Authentication failure details
This section includes information such as the IP address of the sending server, the domain that was verified, and the specific verification mechanism that failed (SPF and/or DKIM).

Information Title
This helps you track down the culprit and identify any potential issues with your email infrastructure.

Certification-Results
Details of the SPF and DKIM check results, including pass or fail and any relevant error messages.

Number of messages
The total number of emails that failed the validation check and were processed according to the DMARC policy set in the record.

Policy Evaluation
This section explains what actions are taken against email messages from non-authentic senders.

How do DMARC RUA reports work?
The standard DMARC RUA reporting process is as follows

1. DMARC Implementation
The first step is to deploy the DMARC protocol and specify a policy that instructs the receiving mail server how to handle emails that fail the authentication check.

2. Email Verification
After sending the email, the recipient's server evaluates whether the sender is authorized to send emails on behalf of the domain name. This is checked by comparing the sender list mentioned in the SPF record with the DKIM digital signature.

3. DMARC Check
The receiving server takes action on illegitimate emails based on the policy set in the domain's DMARC record.

4. Generate RUA report
If your DMARC reports include a reporting mechanism, the recipient's server will generate an RUA report listing all emails sent from your domain that failed SPF and/or DKIM authentication checks.

The generated RUA report contains details of the authentication failure, including the sender's IP address, the authentication method used, and the reason for the failure.