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Domain-based Messaging and Reporting Compliance (DMARC) was officially required to be implemented by U.S. government agencies in October 2018. DMARC is a series of email authentication and reporting checks that improve email security within Federal agencies by improving email fraud defenses. This Department of Homeland Security (DHS) required protocol may result in some external email recipients not receiving some federal sponsor emails if people are auto-forwarding email to another account, such as a personal email account. CU Boulder has configured CU Boulder email to meet DMARC requirements.

It is important for you to know that if your campus email forwards to a personal email account, you may not receive emails from Federal agencies in that forwarded account. Any messages related to grants received, Federal grant opportunities, messages from government employees, etc., will not be delivered to your forwarded address. 

DMARC enables organizations like NSF to verify that email was sent from a trusted source rather than from bad actors such as spammers, hackers or phishers. In a recent reminder from NSF, they note that some external organizations use email routing practices such as email auto-forwarding from organization to personal email accounts or using third-party email distribution services (e.g., Constant Contact, GovDelivery, Amazon SES) that cause messages to be blocked from distribution because they are flagged as potentially fraudulent by DMARC security checks. This means some recipients of NSF email may not be receiving some important NSF communications related to research funding actions, deadlines, and/or other important messages.