Frequently Asked Questions

Email is the lifeblood of modern communication, but its ubiquity also makes it a prime target for cybercriminals seeking to deceive, defraud, or disrupt. To safeguard against these threats and ensure the integrity of your email communications, there's a powerful tool known as DMARC, or Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance.

The Challenge of Email Impersonation

Before we dive into DMARC, it's essential to understand the challenges of email communication. Emails pass through multiple servers and networks on their way to the recipient, creating numerous opportunities for malicious actors to tamper with or impersonate senders.

DMARC: Your Email Security Guardian

DMARC, which stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance, is a comprehensive email authentication protocol designed to combat email impersonation, phishing attacks, and other email-based fraud.

How DMARC Works

DMARC builds on the foundations of SPF and DKIM but takes email authentication to a whole new level:

1. Policy Declaration: The domain owner (the sender) publishes a DNS record that specifies how email from their domain should be handled if it fails SPF or DKIM checks. This DNS record contains DMARC policy settings.
2. Email Reception: When an email is received by the recipient's email server, it performs SPF and DKIM checks as usual. If these checks fail, the server consults the sender's DMARC record.
3. DMARC Verification: DMARC instructs the recipient's server on how to handle emails that fail SPF or DKIM checks. The sender can choose to monitor these failures, quarantine suspicious emails, or reject them outright.
4. Reporting: DMARC provides valuable feedback by generating reports about email authentication activity. These reports help domain owners monitor and improve their email security.

The Significance of DMARC

1. Protection from Impersonation: DMARC is a formidable defense against email impersonation. It ensures that emails claiming to be from your domain are indeed legitimate, making it exceedingly difficult for cybercriminals to impersonate you.
2. Enhanced Email Trustworthiness: Implementing DMARC enhances the trustworthiness of your emails. Email providers are more likely to recognize your emails as safe and deliver them to the recipient's inbox.
3. Reduced Phishing Risks: DMARC is a powerful deterrent against phishing attacks. By reducing the success rate of such attacks, it safeguards individuals and organizations from potential harm.
4. Reputation Management: DMARC helps protect your domain's reputation. It ensures that your legitimate emails are not diluted by fraudulent ones, preserving trust in your brand or organization.

Conclusion

In an era where email threats are prevalent and sophisticated, DMARC emerges as the ultimate guardian angel of email authenticity. Although it operates discreetly in the background, DMARC is a potent tool in the fight against cyber threats. Its implementation is highly recommended for individuals, businesses, and email service providers, as it offers a robust defense against email impersonation and enhances the overall security of email communications. The next time you send or receive an email, know that DMARC is diligently working to protect you from email-based deception and fraud in the vast digital landscape.

In some circumstances, Mail Designer may not be able to store your account login credentials in your Keychain.

To fix this issue, please try the following:

• The easiest way to fix this problem is to restart your Mac.

If the problem still pops up, try this:

• Quit Mail Designer
• Open Keychain Access from Applications > Utilities
• Select your login keychain
• Choose File > Lock Keychain “login”
• Then choose File > Unlock Keychain “login”

Now re-open Mail Designer and try signing in again.

• Using Placeholders for MailChimp guide.

• Using Placeholders for Campaign Monitor guide.

‣ Choose “File" > "Export…” 



‣ Save your file. 

‣ Then, find your saved file in the location that you saved it to.

‣ Right-click the file and choose "Compress “YOUR FILE NAME”" in the menu bar:



‣ This will create a .zip file:

• Exporting as a .zip file guide.

The Anatomy of an Email

Before diving into DKIM, let's briefly understand how emails work. When you send an email, it's like sending a digital letter. It travels through various servers and networks before reaching its intended recipient. Each server it passes through can potentially be a point of vulnerability where malicious actors might tamper with the email's content or disguise themselves as legitimate senders.

Enter DKIM: The Email's Digital Signature

DKIM, which stands for DomainKeys Identified Mail, is a security protocol designed to verify the authenticity and integrity of an email message. It does this by adding a digital signature to the email before it leaves the sender's server. This signature is like a seal of approval, assuring the recipient that the email has not been tampered with and genuinely comes from the claimed sender.

How DKIM Works

DKIM relies on a pair of cryptographic keys: a private key kept by the sender and a public key published in the sender's DNS (Domain Name System) records. Here's how it works:

1. Email Signing: When an email is sent, the sending server uses the sender's private key to generate a unique digital signature based on the email's content. This signature is added to the email's header.
2. Recipient Verification: Upon receiving the email, the recipient's email server retrieves the public key associated with the sender's domain from the DNS records.
3. Signature Verification: The recipient's server uses this public key to verify the email's digital signature. If the signature matches the email's content and has not been altered in transit, the email is considered authentic.
4. Filtering and Delivery: If the email passes DKIM verification, it's more likely to be delivered to the recipient's inbox. If not, it may be flagged as suspicious or sent to the spam folder.

The Importance of DKIM

1. Protection Against Spoofing: One of the most significant benefits of DKIM is its ability to prevent email spoofing. Without DKIM, cybercriminals can easily forge email headers and pretend to be someone they're not. DKIM ensures that the email you receive from a trusted sender is indeed from that sender.
2. Email Integrity: DKIM safeguards the integrity of your emails. It guarantees that your message hasn't been altered during transit, ensuring that the recipient receives the content exactly as you intended.
3. Enhanced Deliverability: When your emails are DKIM-signed, email providers are more likely to trust them. This means your legitimate emails have a better chance of landing in your recipients' inboxes rather than getting lost in spam folders.
4. Reduced Phishing: By reducing the effectiveness of phishing attacks, DKIM helps protect individuals and organizations from falling victim to scams that could result in data breaches or financial losses.

Conclusion

Sending test emails

How it works

Sending individual emails

How it works

This points to an error while authenticating your email account. Try checking the following:

• The username is wrong/incomplete. For example, iCloud accounts sometimes work with "username" but most times need the whole email address as a log in.
• The password is wrong.
• If you're trying TLS, try STARTTLS instead.
• Maybe your server is using a custom port - though this is unlikely.

If you have a Mail program you use (e.g. Apple Mail) try comparing the outgoing mail settings there and use the same settings in Mail Designer.

‣ Copy text that has formatting you want to preserve

‣ Choose “Edit" > "Paste and Match Style” from the menu bar



This will preserve the style of the original text that you copied.

• Copy and paste, preserve style guide

Email has become an integral part of our daily communication, from personal conversations to business dealings. However, with this convenience comes the constant threat of email-based fraud and phishing attacks. To combat these threats and ensure the authenticity of your emails, there's a simple yet crucial tool known as SPF or Sender Policy Framework.

The Vulnerabilities in Email Communication

Understanding SPF requires a brief insight into how email communication functions. When you send an email, it travels through multiple servers and networks before reaching its intended recipient. At each stop, malicious actors can potentially intercept, modify, or impersonate the email.

SPF: The Guardian of Email Authenticity

SPF, which stands for Sender Policy Framework, is a security protocol that acts as a guardian, protecting your email domain from being used by cybercriminals to impersonate you. SPF helps verify the legitimacy of incoming emails by checking if they originate from authorized servers associated with the sender's domain.

How SPF Works

SPF is relatively straightforward in its operation:

1. Sender Declaration: The domain owner (you or your organization) publishes a DNS record specifying which servers are authorized to send emails on its behalf. This record is known as the SPF record.
2. Email Reception: When an email is received by the recipient's email server, the server checks the SPF record of the sender's domain to see if the server that sent the email is authorized to do so.
3. Validation: If the sending server's IP address matches one of the authorized IP addresses listed in the SPF record, the email is considered legitimate and is accepted for delivery. If not, it may be flagged as suspicious or rejected.

The Significance of SPF

1. Protection Against Spoofing: SPF plays a crucial role in preventing email spoofing. It ensures that emails claiming to be from your domain indeed originate from authorized servers, making it harder for cybercriminals to impersonate you.
2. Enhanced Email Deliverability: When you implement SPF, email providers are more likely to trust your emails, leading to better deliverability rates. Your legitimate emails are less likely to end up in spam folders.
3. Reduction in Phishing: By making it more difficult for cybercriminals to impersonate trusted senders, SPF contributes to reducing phishing attacks, protecting individuals and organizations from potential harm.
4. Branding and Reputation: SPF helps maintain your email domain's reputation. It assures recipients that your emails are legitimate, strengthening trust in your brand or organization.

Conclusion

In an age where email is a primary mode of communication and email-based threats are prevalent, SPF serves as a reliable shield against impersonation and fraud. Although it may work silently behind the scenes, SPF is a powerful tool in the fight against cyber threats. Its implementation is highly recommended for individuals, businesses, and email service providers alike to bolster the security of email communications. So, the next time you send or receive an email, remember that SPF is working diligently to protect you from potential email impersonation in the vast digital landscape.

• Checking your design on different email clients guide.

• Navigate to the folder: Your username/Library/Group Containers
• In this folder you will see a Folder ending in .Mail Designer
• Navigate to Documents/MD365 within this folder
• Restore the MD365 folder to your new Mac

Alt text and Apple WebKit

Other issues to be aware of

Ways to resolve this issue

• Go to Mail > Preferences > Viewing and uncheck the box by "Load remote content in messages."
• In Mail Designer 365, use the Testmail service to send yourself a test version of your design.
• Open the email in Mail and check through all the image areas to see if the alt texts appear. Then, do the same on an iPhone to check the mobile version.

‣ Go to "File" > "Design Options."



‣ Remove the check mark from the "Force hyphenation."



‣ Click "Ok."

• Automatic hyphenation guide.

• View, comment on and approve email design drafts
• Receive test emails
• Manage email contacts and audiences
• Schedule and send email campaigns
• Access post campaign analytics

• Rotating objects guide.

Mail Designer 365 allows you to send emails directly from within the application using the SMTP procotol.

In order to add your email account, please open the "Mail Accounts" tab in the preferences of Mail Designer, click "+" and enter the information for the account you want to configure. After you have entered all the required information, save the changes and choose this account in the send window.

Creating an email link in Mail Designer is really straightforward. Simply follow the instructions below to get started:

1. Type your desired text in a text layout block e.g. "Email me."


2. From the sidebar select "Add link" and choose "Email mailto" as the type of link from the drop down menu.


3. Add your email address.

Now your chosen text will appear as a link and when a customer clicks the link it will open a new email to you.

invalid_grant: Bad Request (-10)

1. Go to Mail Designer 365 > Preferences > Mail Accounts.
2. Remove your Gmail address from the list using the "-" icon.
3. Then, click the "+" icon to re-add your Gmail account. You will be prompted to sign in with your Gmail credentials again.