Finally found a way to stop phishing emails from slipping past my filter

I kept getting these fake 'package delivery failed' emails that looked super real. Tried a bunch of stuff but nothing worked until I set up SPF and DKIM records with my domain host Namecheap last month. It dropped the junk by like 80% and now I can actually trust my inbox again. Has anyone else had luck customizing their DMARC policy to block the rest?

3 comments

3 Comments

wendy_henderson2122h ago

Oh man, I feel this pain so hard. I spent an embarrassing weekend trying to figure out why my own SPF record was blocking all my email, and it turned out I had typed the wrong domain in the include line (classic me, can't even copy-paste right). I still haven't touched DMARC because I'm terrified I'll set it to p=reject and lock myself out of my own accounts forever. You're braver than me for customizing that policy, honestly. Maybe if I stop getting those fake PayPal invoices I'll finally work up the nerve to try.

nina_taylor1d ago

Namecheap's SPF setup broke half my email forwarding last month.

josephbailey1d ago

Did you double check that the include statement in your SPF record actually matches what Namecheap uses now? They updated their email system like a year ago and the old include path is still floating around in a lot of tutorials. I had a similar thing happen with another host and it turned out I was using a deprecated server list they had replaced. SPF is tricky because one wrong line can block everything but it's usually user error not the provider's fault. Might be worth rebuilding the record from scratch using their current docs instead of copying an old setup.