How to Set Up an Email DKIM Verification

Our modern world of email has become flooded by spam. It’s no wonder that systems like DKIM have been developed to help combat it. Just what is DKIM – meaning DomainKeys Identified Mail – all about?

DKIM is in essence a secure authorization system, so that the people who receive an email message know it arrived without any modification along the way. The DKIM marks an email message when it’s sent, and the receiver can check those marks to make sure the email got to them without any tampering.

Compare this with a SPF record, where the recipient can make sure they know exactly who sent the message in the first place.

I use MailEnable, so this is how I set up DKIM in MailEnable. In the MailEnable admin interface I chose Messenging Manager – Post Offices – (Domain). I right-clicked on my specific domain URL to get to its properties. There’s a DKIM tab in that area.

Click the checkbox to ‘sign outgoing messages’. They recommend rsa-sha256. Under Selectors, choose New to create a starting point. The name can be any text you’d like to use to identify this record. I use the recommended 1024 key size. Save that.

The system now generates a DNS record for you. Save that value.

Check the box to ‘Make this the active selector’ and then click UPDATE so that part saves.

Now on the entire box click OK to save.

DNS for DKIM

You need to go to your DNS maintenance area to add this in, in the same place you add A records, AAAA records, and MX records. For Network Solutions users, you would log into Network Solutions and list your domain names. Use ‘manage’ by the one you’re working on. In the Advanced Tools / Advanced DNS Records area, add in a new record. This is a TXT record.

For the ‘refers to’ – don’t choose @. Instead choose ‘Other host’ so you get access to a field to type in the actual starting value. This value is going to be your selector key and then the actual text ._domainkey – with those actual letters. So for example if you chose a selector key of MyKey1 the text you typed in to this value would be:

MyKey1._domainkey

Just like that. Don’t swap out anything with the ‘domainkey’ – those are the actual letters you type.

Then for the TXT value, cut and paste in the long strong generated by MailEnable. It should start with an indicator of what version you’re running, by saying:

v=DKIM1;

Then there will be a p= value as well.

Ask with any questions!