One of the main disadvantages of using digital means to communicate is that it can be hard to know you’re talking to the person you think you’re talking to. There are many bad apples out there that would fool you into revealing secrets, thinking you’re conversing with a confidant.
On social media, the problem of impersonators was there from day one. As a result, most social media sites have some decent verification processes. They especially use it to verify that organisations, public officials and famous people are who they say they are.
Seeing a blue checkmark next to Techzim’s Twitter handle will let you know you are conversing with the real Techzim account. We have seen similar verification badges on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and even WhatsApp.
That’s all great but it’s strange that the same kind of verification has not really been available on email. We get all kinds of sensitive information via email and we send some I-hope-no-one-ever-sees-this kind of information to businesses, doctors and the like via email.
It would really be something if there was some check mark to assure us that we are sending that information to the right recipient. Gmail is rolling the feature out.
Google is introducing a blue tick verification feature to Gmail. It is for users who have verified themselves on Gmail’s BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) feature.
The BIMI feature requires senders to use strong authentication and verify their brand logo in order to display a brand logo as an avatar in emails.
Users will now see a checkmark icon for senders that have adopted the BIMI feature. This will help users identify messages from legitimate senders versus impersonators.
Once you hover over the blue checkmark next to a sender’s name, you will see a blurb that says “The sender of this email has verified that they own the domain and logo in the profile image.”
Gmail is rolling out the blue verified checkmarks across both Workspace accounts and personal Google accounts.
So many times I have seen messages like this: CBZ Warns Customers About Circulating Email They Should Ignore. This new Gmail feature should help with that, even if it is not foolproof.
Also read:
POTRAZ: SMS and e-mail phishing scams on the rise
Phishing Attacks Still Most Popular Method Of Cyber Attacks In Africa
Scammers can now convincingly fake browser windows, including URL. You can protect against that
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