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) 99.83% fail · n=14,893
enforce: 0.17%testing (not enforced): 0.15%no record: 99.68%
France companies 100% fail · n=862
no record: 100%
UK companies 99.36% fail · n=2,652
enforce: 0.64%testing (not enforced): 0.45%no record: 98.91%
Norway companies 98.28% fail · n=990
enforce: 1.72%testing (not enforced): 0.91%no record: 97.37%
enforce · 1.72%testing (not enforced) · 0.91%no record · 97.37%

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=229
no record: 100%
100%
smalln=253
no record: 100%
100%
mediumn=200
no record: 100%
100%
largen=180
no record: 100%
100%
UK
micron=230
no record: 100%
100%
smalln=961
enforce: 0.1%testing (not enforced): 0.42%no record: 99.48%
99.9%
medium/largen=1061
enforce: 1.41%testing (not enforced): 0.75%no record: 97.83%
98.59%
dormantn=194
enforce: 0.52%no record: 99.48%
99.48%
no-accountsn=206
no record: 100%
100%
Norway
micron=278
enforce: 0.72%no record: 99.28%
99.28%
smalln=253
enforce: 0.79%testing (not enforced): 1.19%no record: 98.02%
99.21%
mediumn=266
enforce: 2.26%testing (not enforced): 1.88%no record: 95.86%
97.74%
largen=193
enforce: 3.63%testing (not enforced): 0.52%no record: 95.85%
96.37%

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.