What Is A DKIM Selector?
Find Out Your's To Ensure Your Emails Are Properly Signed

DKIM selectors are used to identify which public key is used to sign a message. The selector is typically a string of characters that is associated with a domain name. DKIM selectors are used to help prevent email spoofing and to improve email deliverability.

If you are unfamiliar with DKIM selectors, you won't be the only one. In this post, we will explain how a DKIM selector works and how it's found. Click here to know more about the DKIM selector.

If you're not sure what your DKIM selector is, don't worry. In most cases, your email service provider will have this information. If you're using a third-party email service, you may need to contact their support team to get this information.

Once you have your DKIM selector, you can use it to set up DKIM for your domain. This will help to ensure that your emails are properly signed and that they are more likely to be delivered to your recipients.

What is DKIM?

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DKIM stands for DomainKeys Identified Mail and pertains to the proof of an email being sent. Similar to SPF, DKIM is an open standard for email authentication that is used for DMARC alignment. A DKIM record exists in the DNS, but it's a little bit more complex than SPF. DKIM presents the advantage of being able to survive forwarding, which makes it superior to SPF and a foundation for securing your email.

What is a DKIM Record?

A domain owner adds an DKIM record, which is a modified Text record, to the DNS records on the receiving end. This Text record will contain a public key that receivable mail servers use to verify a message s signature. The key often is provided by the company that is sending your email, such as Google.

What is a DKIM Signature?

DKIM affixes a signature header to the email that's encrypted and contains all of the info an email server needs to confirm that the signature is secure. You can create an electronic signature utilizing the DKIM key pair. The originating email server has what is called the private DKIM key, which can be verified by the receiving email server or ISP with the other half of the keypair, called the public DKIM key.

These indicators travel with the emails and are verified on the way by the email web servers that move the emails toward their final destination.

What is DKIM Selector?

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The DKIM selector decides the public DKIM account of a domain. It is an attribute of the DKIM Signature and will be included in the DKIM header of an email. You can create multiple selectors within a single domain if you want to assign Special Signatory Controls to different users.

Once you have added a selector and verified the selector, you make it the default and enable it for the domain. Once enabled, the domains in all outgoing emails are signed with the default selector, unless the user is associated with a different selector in the Users directory.

How can I find my DKIM Selector?

A DKIM selector is specified as soon as a private public key pair is created if DKIM is set up for the email domain (or email sender), and it can be any arbitrary string of text. The DKIM selector is inserted into the DKIM-Signature email header as a s=tag when an email is sent. The simplest way to find the selector for your domain is sending an email to yourself.

When you open an email, view the header (some email clients may call this raw or full headers ) of the message. The goal is to view the header information signature, which includes DKIM verification results.
Search the headers for DKIM-signature to locate the corresponding DKIM signature on the message. If there are more than one DKIM-Signature header, find the one which contains your domain. The header This DKIM signature contains an attribute “s=” is the selector used.