With the increase in number of cyber crimes and that too majorly via E-mail, Gmail took another step in user security. It adds a super-trustworthy key in its labs new feature. With this feature if enabled you will see a “key” which shows the authenticity of the received message. Earlier for the security of such critical emails from the trusted vendors, Gmail used to match sent email’s domain information with the header information and if they both mismatched Gmail never accepted that email. You could not even see those emails in your spam folder, as Gmail never accepted that. A trustworthy sender or we can call it as a verified account would have this kind of key prefixed with its Email address.
How do I Enable this Lab Feature ?
Lab features are simple to implement, just goto the settings page and find Labs tab and there you can enable lab feature called “Authentication icon for verified senders” and save. You should be able to see that Icon then.
At present the verified senders are only two i.e. Ebay and Paypal. However google plans to add more in this list as the time comes. The reason being that the sender need to secure their system such that no fraud emails can be sent by faking their domain names. If that leaks and once it has a super-trustworthy key then no user will doubt it. Well wehnever Google adds new in the list you will be the first one to know, as it will appear in front of your sender list automatically, all you need to do is enable the Lab settings as explained above. This is another brilliant step in reducing phishing , scams etc. over the internet. So next time you get an E-mail claiming that some king sent you money through a paypal account, do not forget to check the Super key.
Stay Digified !!
Sachin Khosla
