Gmail Adds Anti-phishing Tool

According to MXLogic.com, Google users can get visual verification of the authenticity of emails from PayPal and eBay by turning on the authentication icon from the Labs tab under settings. You’ll then see an icon that looks like a key to emails from these verified senders.

Gmail spam expert Brad Taylor said that Google added extra protection last year for PayPal and eBay emails due to the high volume of phishing attacks targeting online payments from these services.

“We do that by looking at the ‘From’ header and when it says ‘ebay.com’ for example, it means it really did come from ebay.com. Anything else is rejected; it won’t even appear in your spam folder because Gmail won’t accept it,” Taylor wrote on Google’s blog.

With the addition of the key icon, Gmail users get the visual confirmation that the emails have been verified as “super-trustworthy,” Taylor said.

The anti-phishing verification is limited to just eBay and PayPal right now, but Google hopes to add more senders to the pool of super-trustworthy email.