Google has joined Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn in adding verified blue checkmarks to confirm the identity of business Gmail accounts.
The idea is that it will give consumers more confidence that they’re dealing with official accounts, in a world where scammers are getting increasingly proficient at impersonating others via social engineering techniques.
Hovering over the blue checkmark will reveal a text reading: “The sender of this email has verified” that they own the domain and logo.
“Strong email authentication helps users and email security systems identify and stop spam, and also enables senders to leverage their brand trust,” Google wrote in a blog post announcing the change. “This increases confidence in email sources and gives readers an immersive experience, creating a better email ecosystem for everyone.”
Interested businesses may not need to do anything to opt-in, if they’ve already been proactive in working with Gmail’s enterprise options. Blue checkmarks will automatically appear on emails from companies that are enrolled on Gmail’s Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) feature.
BIMI has been around since 2021, and ensures that businesses have laid the groundwork to appear trusted, with strong authentication and a brand logo as their Gmail avatar.
While the blue check is turning into a universal ‘verified’ sign around the web, its implementation can mean very different things in different places.
For Gmail and LinkedIn, it’s purely a free authentication service and a sign that the company or individual in question has jumped through certain hoops to prove their identity.
On Twitter, it’s a bit more complicated. It was once applied to notable people to avoid the risk of impersonation. In the Elon Musk era, however, it’s chiefly become a sign that somebody has paid £11 per month (or had it forced upon them as a refusenik celebrity), ironically leading to just the kind of impersonation it was originally designed to stamp out.
It’s part of the Twitter Blue package, which also allows longer tweets, longer videos (something which has had teething problems with piracy) and greater reach.
Meta’s paid implementation with Facebook and Instagram is closer to Twitter’s. Ostensibly, it’s about “increasing authenticity and security” but it too promises “increased visibility and reach” as well as direct access to customer support.
With these differing implementations and prices, the blue checkmark could struggle to be seen as a universal symbol of authenticity. The question is whether that’s still better than nothing.
