email-auth · severity medium

MTA-STS

Share of email-active domains with no enforcing MTA-STS policy (absent, or testing mode only).

Measured every Monday · last updated

How it is measured

Tier 0 + 3a. TXT at _mta-sts.<domain>; if present, fetch https://mta- sts.<domain>/.well-known/mta-sts.txt and read mode. Denominator: has_mx.

Why it matters

The declared-vs-enforcing split is exactly the brand thesis. mode: testing publishes a policy, produces reports, and does not require TLS — downgrade attacks still work. The DNS record alone looks like adoption; only the fetched policy reveals whether it bites.

The base rate

Two independent populations. The global, domain-anchored figure is unbiased; the company-anchored figures are built by matching company names to domains and skew toward more digitally-mature firms. Both are published, so the gap is visible.

Global (all domains) 99.85% fail · n=15,007
enforce: 0.15%testing: 0.15%no record: 99.69%
France companies 99.88% fail · n=841
enforce: 0.12%testing: 0.12%no record: 99.76%
UK companies 99.61% fail · n=2,597
enforce: 0.39%testing: 0.46%no record: 99.15%
Norway companies 98.2% fail · n=944
enforce: 1.8%testing: 1.06%no record: 97.14%
enforce · 1.8%testing · 1.06%no record · 97.14%

By company size band

Company-anchored cuts (national registries with a size proxy), split by size band. Right-hand figure is the share not meeting the control.

France
micron=212
testing: 0.47%no record: 99.53%
100%
smalln=245
no record: 100%
100%
mediumn=200
no record: 100%
100%
largen=184
enforce: 0.54%no record: 99.46%
99.46%
UK
micron=231
enforce: 0.43%no record: 99.57%
99.57%
smalln=954
testing: 0.21%no record: 99.79%
100%
medium/largen=1025
enforce: 0.88%testing: 0.78%no record: 98.34%
99.12%
dormantn=195
testing: 0.51%no record: 99.49%
100%
no-accountsn=192
testing: 0.52%no record: 99.48%
100%
Norway
micron=266
enforce: 0.75%testing: 0.38%no record: 98.87%
99.25%
smalln=242
enforce: 0.41%testing: 0.41%no record: 99.17%
99.59%
mediumn=253
enforce: 3.16%testing: 2.37%no record: 94.47%
96.84%
largen=183
enforce: 3.28%testing: 1.09%no record: 95.63%
96.72%

Every segment

Pick one to see the citable answer for a company like yours, with its trend and methodology.

Show the remaining 62 segments

Slices below 100 measured members are withheld rather than shown with a wide interval — an absent country or issuer means too little data, not zero failures. Licensed CC BY 4.0. Machine-readable data per segment: append .json or .csv to its URL.