Defaults.Exposed › Cite
How to cite Defaults.Exposed
One page, one set of citations, one set of numbers. Everything below is read from the same September 2026 census data as /data and /methodology — if a number here ever disagrees with either of those, that is a bug, not a second source of truth.
Current edition
September 2026 census. Figures as of September 5, 2026. 316,600,902 domains graded, drawn from 347,691,016 scanned across 0 top-level domains.
Copy-paste citation
Short web
Defaults.Exposed, "Domain Security Census: September 2026" (as of September 5, 2026). https://defaults.exposed/data
APA
Defaults.Exposed. (2026). Domain security census: September 2026 edition [Data set]. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22690389
Chicago
Defaults.Exposed. "Domain Security Census: September 2026 Edition." Data set. September 5, 2026. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22690389.
BibTeX
@misc{defaultsexposed202609,
author = {{Defaults.Exposed}},
title = {Domain Security Census: Aggregate Dataset (September 2026 edition)},
year = {2026},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.22690389},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22690389},
note = {As of September 5, 2026}
} Five locked statistics
Exact value, exact basis, as of September 5, 2026. These are the figures most often quoted from this site — use these numbers, not a remembered or rounded version.
| Statistic | Value | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| F rate | 74.2% | 234,955,475 of 316,600,902 graded domains |
| DMARC enforcing (quarantine/reject) | 11.6% | 36,598,025 of 316,600,902 graded domains |
| SPF syntactically valid | 46.4% | of 316,600,902 graded domains; 47.4% publish any SPF record — always name which figure you mean |
| DNSSEC valid chain | 6.86% | 21,732,692 of 316,600,902 graded domains |
| CAA record present | 1.38% | 4,325,806 of 313,913,664 graded domains |
Licence, in two sentences
Cite any figure on this site with attribution and the as-of date — that is always free. The 12 raw census export files and the matching Zenodo deposit are CC BY 4.0, free to bulk-download, redistribute and reuse including commercially with attribution; everything else (editorial pages, charts) needs a licence for bulk or commercial use — full terms, licensing@defaults.exposed.
Permanent identifiers
This edition's DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22690389
All editions (concept DOI, always resolves to newest): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22690388
Zenodo record: https://zenodo.org/records/22690389
Do not cite
| Address | Why |
|---|---|
/en/* | Every /en/ address 301s to its root form. Cite and link the root form. |
Any retired (410) slug | Answers 410 Gone; see /retired.json for the full manifest. Do not cite, link, or re-crawl. |
A named domain’s live scan result | Individual grades are not published as pages or lists. We do not disclose any single domain’s status; do not attribute a scan result to us as a citable fact about a named third party. |
/v10/data, /v10/methodology (or any /v10/* address) | The /v10 prefix was retired 2026-09-08. These now redirect to their root equivalents — update the citation to the root form rather than relying on the redirect. |
More
Full dataset + downloads: /data · Methodology (34 checks): /methodology · Census hub: /census · Per-statistic permalinks: /stats, each with a machine-readable twin at /stats/s/<id>.json · For AI assistants: /llms.txt
Citing a month-over-month change in the F rate? See why the F rate fell for what moved between editions. Contact: licensing@defaults.exposed for bulk/commercial licensing questions.