Email notifications certificates and signing
Blue may send hundreds or thousands of emails during the course of an evaluation project. Unfortunately, many email systems may inadvertently identify these messages as SPAM. Implementing a signed certificate or other authentication technology can mitigate this problem, providing a much higher likelihood that the email will arrive as intended.
S/MIME email signing (X509 signed certificate)
X.509 is a system that uses signed certificates generated by an official certification authority using a public key/private key scheme.
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)
DKIM is an email authentication method that allows the receiver of an email to validate that the email being received has actually come from the domain indicated. This is accomplished by attaching a cryptographic authentication key to the email which can then be verified by using a public key that is published on the DNS. Public key/private key verification is typically conducted by the infrastructure and does not require any intervention from the end users. Consult the Explorance Customer Support to implement DKIM.
If the certificate is working properly then all emails sent by Blue will contain the DKIM private key which will be checked by recipient mail servers against the DKIM public key.
SPF records and whitelisting IP addresses
In addition to setting up the X509 signed certificate or DKIM authentication methods to prevent emails from Blue being registered as SPAM or junk mail, there are some additional ways (external to Blue) to ensure that emails get sent where they should.
In order to help prevent emails from Blue being marked as spam or junk will require Explorance's SPF record to be included in the SPF record of the domain name of the From address used by Blue to send emails.
For example, if Blue is sending emails from provost@surveys.myuniversity.edu, then Explorance's SPF record should be included in the SPF record of surveys.myuniversity.edu.
In addition, Explorance's SMTP relay servers' IP addresses (listed below) should be added to the domain name's SPF record.
If emails from Blue are still being marked as spam or junk, it is important to remember that institutions can have other policies that cause emails to be marked as spam or junk. This includes checking against spam filters that depend on the content of emails.
Check with your organization's IT department to know why emails are getting marked as spam or junk, or send a copy of an email with full headers to support@explorance.com to have it examined in detail.
Explorance SMTP relay server IP addresses
- 184.107.80.100
- 184.107.80.101
- 184.107.80.103
- 184.107.80.104
- 184.107.80.105
- 184.107.80.106
- 184.107.80.107
- 184.107.80.108
- 184.107.80.109
- 184.107.80.110
- 184.107.80.111
- 184.107.80.119
- 184.107.80.123
- 184.107.63.100
- 174.142.116.39
- 174.142.116.50
- 174.142.116.51
- 174.142.116.40
- 167.89.8.219
Additional SMTP relay server IP addresses that we may utilize
- 149.72.26.106
- 149.72.25.236
- 149.72.25.163
- 149.72.25.119
- 149.72.163.211
- 149.72.154.153
- 149.72.160.211
167.89.8.219184.107.80.100184.107.80.111184.107.80.101184.107.80.123184.107.80.119184.107.63.100174.142.116.50174.142.116.51174.142.116.39174.142.116.40