One Email, Three Identities: SPF, DKIM and DMARC Explained
This article explains the technical distinction between SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols in email authentication. It clarifies that these three mechanisms verify different identities and that a message can pass authentication even if the sender domains do not perfectly align.
A single email carries three separate domain identities, plus the IP address it was actually delivered from, and nothing requires any of them to match. Most of the confusion around SPF, DKIM and DMARC comes from assuming there is one "sender" to check. There are three identities, they are checked by different mechanisms, and a message can pass DMARC while two of the three point in different directions.
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