Study of 671,000 domains reveals email security gaps threatening AI agent infrastructure
A DNS scan of 671,693 domains conducted on July 25, 2026, found that despite growing DMARC adoption, enforcement rates actually fell by 0.42 percentage points last month as most new records were set to the non-enforcing 'p=none' policy. Of the 468,749 domains publishing DMARC records, only about 49% enforce quarantine or rejection, while roughly 117,000 domains carry records that block nothing and report nothing. Additionally, 166,442 DMARC-publishing domains have no working reporting address, meaning they receive no telemetry about email delivery failures or spoofing attempts. The analysis also challenges the assumption that self-hosted email is obsolete, finding it remains the single largest mail-hosting category at 22.79%, ahead of both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. These infrastructure weaknesses are particularly relevant as AI agent platforms increasingly rely on email APIs, with their end-users concentrated in the less-protected long tail of the internet.
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