Technology

Email Rejected Due to the Sender Domain DMARC Policy

When an email is flagged by the Illinois State University DMARC policy, the sender receives notification of the blocked email stating, "Rejected due to the sender domain DMARC policy" (see Figure 1):

For more information regarding the university DMARC policy, please refer to:

Figure 1:

 

There are several reasons an email may be flagged by this policy:


The ISU Email Address Was Spoofed by a Malicious Third Party:

  • A scammer may have "spoofed" an actual ISU email address in order to send malicious email. This involves a user masking their true email address to appear as if a message were being sent from an ISU (@ilstu.edu) address. Often this can be detected by hovering your cursor over the sending email address to see if the address that pops-up is different from the address you are hovering over. In this case, our DMARC policy will flag the email as the scammer is not authorized to send email from the ISU domain. The owner of the spoofed email account will receive notice of the blocked email (see above), and may be confused as to why they received the message, since they did not actually send the email that was flagged.
  • In the event of a spoofed account, the actual ISU email account has not been compromised. The address was simply "spoofed" by the scammer, and there is no action to be taken by the owner of the spoofed account. The DMARC policy has been put in place partially to catch this type of scam. If an ISU user is not sure if they were spoofed or if they were compromised, they may contact the Technology Support Center for assistance (see contact information at the bottom of this article).

The ISU Email Address Has a Rule Set Up to Forward to a Different Email Client:

  • This may be an issue if the email client used by the account owner has not been listed as being DMARC compliant by ISU.
  • If you suspect this is the case, you may contact the Technology Support Center for assistance (see contact information at the bottom of this article).

Some Other Issue is Triggering DMARC Policy:

  • It is recommended you contact the Technology Support Center for assistance (see contact information at the bottom of this article).

How to Get Help

Technical assistance is available through the Illinois State University Technology Support Center at: