Does DMARC TXT record require trailing semicolon?

Question

I've left off the trailing semicolon in each TXT record of my DMARC records, but I've never thought if this is ignoring some convention, or could cause lookups to fail somehow.

For example, is there any difference between:

"v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:dmarc@mydomain.com"

and

"v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:dmarc@mydomain.com;"

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 07 '21 at 08:57

4

Either is fine. The specification shows the dmarc-sep, which is defined as %x3b (';'), is optional for the trailing DMARC record segment.

edited Oct 07 '21 at 08:57

Community

1
1

answered Nov 22 '16 at 10:53

mfalkus

148
8

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 18 '16 at 17:57

3

It doesn't require a trailing semi-colon. I've inspected a lot of DMARC records and I never seen one with with trailing semi-colon. The trailing semi-colon might actually cause issues with validators.

answered Nov 18 '16 at 17:57

Henry

2,953
2
21
34

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 02 '22 at 07:15

An errata clearly states a trailing semicolon needs to be present for the "DMARC1" version tag.

I was wondering why I got errors from some testing platforms, but not from others, with DMARC external domain authorization for rua and ruf, which usually contain only the "v=DMARC1" tag with nothing else. Apparently in this particular case the trailing semicolon is required, even if its the only and last one.

https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata/eid5440

Courtesy of internet.nl

Does DMARC TXT record require trailing semicolon?

3 Answers3