Gmail Labs Adds Anti-Phishing Key

Lifehacker readers have great phishing IQs, but if you’d like a little extra reassurance before clicking through to your PayPal account, for example, Gmail Labs’ new “Authentication icon for verified senders” feature adds an extra bit of reassurance.

Simply put, if an email is from a “super-trustworthy” source, your Gmail account will include a little key icon next to the sender. From the Official Gmail Blog:

“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.

Right now the feature is limited to eBay and PayPal, so if you don’t use either service, it probably won’t be all that useful for you. Gmail hopes to add more in the future, though, and for our part we’d hope to see most of the more popular banks supported. Either way, it’s a great idea, and a step in the right direction for battling phishing.

New in Labs: The super-trustworthy, anti-phishing key [Official Gmail Blog]


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