Published a DMARC record but haven’t received any XML Reports?
A common problem many people face when implementing DMARC for the first time is that they are not receiving aggregate XML reports (reports generated for delivery to the rua= tag) in their dmarcian account. These XML reports are the driving force of DMARC. Without them, it’s very difficult to get an accurate picture of your domain’s usage across the internet.
If you’ve created a dmarcian account, have published records but have not received data, don’t fret! It is typically caused by one (or more) of these four things:
Too early
If you just published (or updated) your DMARC record, there are a couple time delays which will affect how rapidly information is visible in your dmarcian views.
- your domain’s entry itself has a TTL, so that may need to expire in a remote server’s cache before it re-fetches your record
- DMARC rua data is intended to be generated on a stable worldwide timeframe view of UTC midnight to UTC midnight (24 hours) by default. Regardless of your use of ri=3600 in a DMARC record, many environments will *only* send RUA after the end of a UTC day. If you created or updated your entry at 08:00 UTC on Monday, your first reports are probably going to only begin collation 16 hours later. In addition, some environments may store a domain’s DMARC state for the entire day, from the first time seen. So it might be two time periods before you see reports.
Errors in your DMARC Record
It is not uncommon for errors in a DMARC record to cause reporting mechanisms to fail. Often these errors are due to typos or illegal characters present in the record. These can sometimes be tricky to spot (such as a colon instead of a semicolon) and it is possible to accidentally paste in embedded characters that you typically won’t see with the naked eye (such as an embedded return or newline n character). Keep the following points in mind when publishing your DMARC record:
- The v=DMARC1 tag is not optional and is case sensitive. Remember: DMARC1 must be in caps!
- Addresses inside rua and ruf tags must be in URI format (i.e. mailto:[email protected])
- Your DMARC record must be located at _dmarc..com
Use dmarcian’s DMARC Inspector to inspect your domain and identify any errors that may be present in your DMARC record.
Errors in your Forwarding Settings
If you are not sending reports directly to dmarcian, ensure that your forwarding settings are set up properly. If you see reports in the inbox where RUA reports are being sent but you don’t see this data in your dmarcian account, your reports are not being forwarded properly. Double check your settings and make sure you are forwarding to the unique email address provided by dmarcian (it typically looks like [email protected]). You can find this address in your account preferences, as well as in the Mission Control.
You can always re-forward undelivered reports or upload them by hand to your account using the XML-to-Human Converter.
Low Volume Domains
If you’re positive you have a valid DMARC record and your delivery settings are correct, it is entirely likely that the domain you are collecting data for simply doesn’t send a lot of email. This typically applies for domains that send less than ~50 emails a day. This doesn’t mean you will never receive reports, rather it just means that it may take a few extra days for these reports to arrive.
Though these are report delivery issues we see the most, they are not the only possible culprits. If you’ve checked all of your settings and still aren’t sure why your reports are not appearing in your account, don’t hesitate to contact [email protected]. Let us know who you are and what kind of problems you’re having. We’ll check into it!
Want to continue the conversation? Head over to the dmarcian Forum.
