If you have an email account, you’re no doubt familiar with spam. Digital filters have come a long way over the years, with many email providers automatically shielding us from junk email. But try as they might to shield us from spam, there are always a few (or a lot) that sneak through. Now, Google has announced that one of its many new priorities is to crack down even further on spam emails, with new protections coming to Gmail in 2024.
Gmail announces plans to crack down on spam emails
In a post on the Google blog, Group Product Manager (Gmail Security & Trust), Neil Kumaran, outlined how these new spam protections will work.
Gmail’s AI-powered defences reportedly already stop more than 99.9 per cent of spam and phishing emails from hitting our inboxes. However, Gmail will now introduce new measures to try and curb the increasing rise in spam and malware.
Google will require bulk senders (that is, those who send more than 5,000 emails a day) to be validated with a form of authentication. Starting by February 2024, Gmail will require bulk senders to:
- Authenticate their email by following best practices
- Enable receivers to unsubscribe with one click (which must be applied within two days of the request)
- Stay under a spam rate threshold established by Google
Google indicated that their industry partners, like Yahoo, are also working to adopt these updates.
Last year, Google introduced requirements that any emails sent to a Gmail address must have some form of authentication. According to the blog, this has seen the number of unauthenticated messages drop by 75 per cent. Pairing this with the new requirements outlined above should, hopefully, eradicate spam from filtering through to our inboxes.
If you want to report an email as spam yourself, you can do so by opening the message (do not click on any suspicious links or images), clicking on the little stop sign-shaped icon and tapping Report Spam.
Lead Image Credit: Google
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