DMARC reports are sent to a domain that has not authorised them
The DMARC record on `your domain` asks receivers to send its reports to older TLS versions, which is outside your own domain.
Why it matters
The DMARC record on `your domain` asks receivers to send its reports to older TLS versions, which is outside your own domain. When the report address belongs to someone else, that domain has to publish a record consenting to receive them (a TXT record at `your domain._report._dmarc.<their-domain>`, RFC 7489 §7.1) — and it does not. Reporters that follow the specification discard those reports rather than sending them, so you can be monitoring a domain and receiving nothing while everything looks correctly configured. If this is a DMARC reporting service, finish its setup — it will tell you the exact record to publish, usually on your side or theirs. If the address is a mailbox you own at another domain, publish the record there yourself.
How ShipReady detects it
Email-authentication DNS records (DMARC / SPF). Almost every AI-built SaaS sends transactional email — password resets, magic links, receipts — through Resend, SendGrid or Postmark. Setting that up gets the mail delivered; it does not stop anyone else sending mail that claims to come from the same domain. Without a DMARC policy, a receiving server has no instruction to reject a forgery, so an attacker can send "reset your password" from the product's own domain and the message will land in the inbox looking authentic. This check is almost entirely DNS rather than HTTP — one exception is MTA-STS, whose policy is only half-published in DNS; the other half is a file fetched over HTTPS (see _check_mta_sts). Nearly everything else here is the most deterministic kind of check the scanner has: a record either exists or it does not, so there is no heuristic and no false-positive surface. The one place judgement is required is deciding WHICH domain to ask about — see _organizational_domain.
Detection is deterministic. ShipReady reports this only when it observes the condition directly, and prefers to miss a real problem over inventing one. Rule version 1.10.0.
How to fix it
This is the prompt ShipReady puts in your report — written to be pasted straight into Cursor, Claude Code, or whichever assistant built the app.
Your DMARC record on your domain sends reports to a third-party reporting service, which is outside your domain, and a third-party reporting service has not published the record that consents to receiving them — so reporters following RFC 7489 §7.1 discard those reports instead of sending them. The fix is a TXT record at your domain._report._dmarc.a third-party reporting service whose value is "v=DMARC1". If a third-party reporting service belongs to a DMARC reporting service, this is a step in their onboarding they will publish for you once the domain is verified in their dashboard — finish that setup rather than adding the record yourself. If it is a mailbox you own at another domain you control, publish the record there. Then confirm reports actually arrive: if none appear within a few days of normal sending volume, the authorization is still missing.
Frequently asked questions
- What does "DMARC reports are sent to a domain that has not authorised them" mean?
- The DMARC record on `your domain` asks receivers to send its reports to older TLS versions, which is outside your own domain.
- How serious is it?
- ShipReady rates this low. Worth fixing. Small individually, and they accumulate.
- How do I fix it?
- Paste the fix prompt on this page into Cursor, Claude Code or your AI editor. It is the same prompt ShipReady puts in your report.
- Can I check my own site?
- Yes — ShipReady scans up to ten pages of any public site for free and reports this alongside every other check. The free report lists every issue it finds and shows full evidence and a fix prompt for the critical and high-severity ones; medium and low findings are counted and unlock on Pro.
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