Does the upcoming Google DMARC/DKIM requirement mean that emails are somehow going through Google?

[contrash_sucks]

I find it quite troubling having anything going through or even using ANY Google "service" or platform. We all know that they are not to be in the least bit trusted. So, what does this actually mean and how is it being implemented?
If I use your email portal, am I in a round-about way using Google through this thing?
If I use eM Client and my Sonic email address, am I using Google?
If I use a Sonic email, am I using Google?
As a regular email user for personal use, does Google in any way (no matter how remote they portray it) ever see it or go through any of their tentacles? in any way.
Do not forget their latest uncovered sin of spying on users in Incognito mode or Private Mode.

[ngufra]

The issue is that email works between a sender and a receiver.
If you don't comply with rules set by the receiver (or their ISP), they will refuse to deliver it.

Email sent between two Sonic customers stay within sonic network but if you sent to someone on gmail, google has to see it eventually and possible decide you are not trustworthy and not deliver it.
Email between Sonic and proton mail also probably is not handled by anyone else.

[daniel15]

The requirement just means that email servers that send emails to Gmail users need to properly sign the emails using DKIM, and have valid DMARC records. Neither of these technologies are Google-specific nor do they mean that Google has anything to do with your Sonic email account (except when you send an email to a Gmail user, of course - the email has to reach the Gmail user somehow!).

sonic.net has properly configured DMARC records, and probably correctly configured DKIM too, so it shouldn't be an issue. (I can't actually test since I have a basic account that does not come with email)

[contrash_sucks]

So, what other email companies than Google, Yahoo and Hotmail are doing this? As the "Important Notice About Your Email Service" mentioned "using a third-party email client such as Gmail or Hotmail using your sonic.net or..." what are the other email providers and clients? This is a case where generalities do not suffice; an actual definitive answer is required". "Such as" answers are incomplete answers.
So, Sonic implements this on their end also. Is this then a Google sort of standard being used? And if so does this mean that servers then check the validity or whatever by querying Google, like those "safe browsing" things?

[ngufra]

I suggest you read up on these standards.
Wikipedia probably has good information.
There is a nice article from AFNIC also : https://www.afnic.fr/en/observatory-and ... rs-emails/

Sonic is just saying their infrastructure is ready. You can use it if you want. If you use a third party service to send bulk email, they will need to comply with whatever google requires to reach their destination at google.

If you use sonic webmail or an email client configured to talk to sonic smtp servers, you would typically be fine.

[kgc]

Sonic is just saying their infrastructure is ready. You can use it if you want. If you use a third party service to send bulk email, they will need to comply with whatever google requires to reach their destination at google.

And more specifically, if you use a third party service it cannot send mail from @sonic.net anymore. Based on our DMARC reports it is clear that many users are doing this but for privacy reasons effectively nobody implements forensic DMARC reporting so we cannot see anything other than where the unsigned mail is coming from. This is why we felt it was, unfortunately, necessary to send an email to every email account we manage that would confuse 99.9% of the recipients.

[contrash_sucks]

Ah, okay. I think I get the idea after clicking on the first link in the article that ngufra cites. The link from within that article sites a French study of the use of these standards and the scale of the implementation of them.
[url][/https://www.afnic.fr/en/observatory-and ... he-fr-tld/]
In explaining this, I got the general idea of how it works by linking DNS addresses to the sender's domain and using simple flags. The nuts and bolts of it are not gone into but in the general understanding it sounds like a good thing. And it is non-Google!!! Yeah!!! Google just uses it on their end for their stuff, or so it seems.

[oddhack]

The nuts and bolts of it are not gone into but in the general understanding it sounds like a good thing. And it is non-Google!!! Yeah!!! Google just uses it on their end for their stuff, or so it seems.

The drawback isn't so much that it's a Google-specific technology, it's that Google is using its nigh-monopoly power to increasingly restrict internet standards like email - to the point that running your own email server is becoming effectively impossible. Heck, our standards group has been forced to misconfigure our mailing lists to the point that we can longer see the frickin' *name* of a person who sent mail to the list in the From: line any longer, because too many recipients have gmail etc. addresses and won't see the messages otherwise.

Yes, there are motivations around some of this stuff having to do with spam and forgeries, but the downsides are broad and deep. Make no mistake - if mega-companies like Google possibly can, they will do away with the "Inter" part of the Internet to their benefit. They've been trying for years and are getting closer. Chrome is now such a dominant web browser that they can proceed to gradually killing ad blockers and enforcing pervasive tracking, for example.

Microsoft was a penny-ante existential risk by comparison, in their peak days.

</justifiedparanoia>