Recently Google and Yahoo have announced that they will be enforcing email authentication and spam prevention requirements that will impact all senders, in February 2024.

Google will require email authentication for all messages and other spam prevention requirements for bulk senders will now be mandatory. Yahoo’s requirements are similar. By increasing email protections and security, Google and Yahoo are taking steps to keep email a trusted source for communication and commerce. We expect more top tier email providers to follow this lead and implement these requirements soon too.

Email authentication has previously been best practice and unsubscribe links are a standard legal requirement, but these new requirements will change how Google and Yahoo detemine if an email is delivered or rejected. To comply with these updated deliverability requirements we recommend all organisations authenticate email through the use of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. All our Infrastructure and Support services ensure that all these are in place.

We also recommend further compliance for organisations conducting bulk email messaging and/or email marketing, including ensuring there is a clear and easy unsubscribe process as well as monitoring the spam rate in any campaigns. Don’t forget that all this applies to organisations as well as individuals, as Google email includes Google Workspace as well as personal Gmail addresses and Yahoo also hosts business services as well as individuals.

The key changes:

• Google and Yahoo will require all senders to authenticate their emails.
• Recipients must be able to unsubscribe from bulk mailings with ease and senders must process unsubscribe requests within two days.
• Google has promised to establish a clear spam threshold of 0.3% in order to maintain access to Google inboxes.