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Gmail Unveils EBay/PayPal Authentication Icon
Doug Caverly
Staff Writer
2009-07-13
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The Gmail Spam Czar (yes, that appears to be his official, printed-on-a-business-card title) is doing his best to make sure you never again see another email falsely claiming to be from eBay or PayPal. And in this fight, he's introduced a new authentication icon.
 | | Gmail Unveils eBay/PayPal Authentication Icon |  |
The icon is a plain yellow/gold key that will appear next to certain senders' names. As for how to make it appear (when appropriate), Brad Taylor writes, "Turn on 'Authentication icon for verified senders' from the Labs tab under Settings, and you'll see a key icon next to verified emails that are super-trustworthy."
Taylor then explains, "'Super-trustworthy' is a technical term I just invented that means: (1) the sender, usually a financial institution, is a target of phishers, (2) all of the sender's email is authenticated with DKIM, and (3) Gmail rejects any fake messages that claim to come from this sender, but actually don't."
The slight catch is that it's apparently hard to establish whether something's "super-trustworthy," and right now, this system will only work with eBay and PayPal-related emails. But since we didn't promise anything else in the opening paragraph, you may be pleased to hear that more senders should become involved in the future (at which point icons will automatically appear on their emails).
Taylor's asking for feedback, so if you receive email from PayPal and/or eBay on a regular basis, give this feature a shot and visit the appropriate Google Groups thread afterward to fill him in.
View All Articles by Doug Caverly
About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for SecurityProNews. InternetFinancialNews, SearchNewz, and WebProNews.
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