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Email Security Management · Lookalike domain spoofing

Lookalike domain spoofing checklist for 2026

Short answer

A complete lookalike domain spoofing checklist has 4 setup items and 2 things to audit against. Work through setup in order, then schedule a quarterly review.

Setup checklist#

  • ☐ Register the most obvious typo and hyphen variants of your domain.
  • ☐ Monitor new registrations that contain your brand string.
  • ☐ Configure inbound gateway rules to flag display names matching executives from external domains.
  • ☐ Train finance and executive assistants specifically on this pattern.

Audit checklist#

  • ☐ Confirm you are not: assuming DMARC p=reject protects against lookalikes.
  • ☐ Confirm you are not: registering variants but leaving them without DMARC reject themselves.

Ongoing monitoring#

  • ☐ Weekly: review provider dashboards (Postmaster Tools, SNDS) and bounce logs
  • ☐ Monthly: re-run the setup verification after any vendor or DNS change
  • ☐ Quarterly: full audit against this checklist

Frequently asked questions#

How many lookalike domains should I register?

The top 10 to 20 variants by likelihood is a reasonable start; monitoring covers the long tail.

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