Gmail users alerted as blue tick verification begins

Google has announced it is rolling out blue checkmark verification on Gmail.

While many celebrities and businesses have had their blue ticks removed on Twitter, Google has announced it using the verification feature for its email service to help users spot spam or fake email senders.

However, only a limited number of users will benefit from the blue ticket for the time being.

A Google Workspace blog post read: "Strong email authentication helps users and email security systems identify and stop spam, and also enables senders to leverage their brand trust.

"This increases confidence in email sources and gives readers an immersive experience, creating a better email ecosystem for everyone."

Those who use Gmail’s existing Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) feature, which authenticates their brand logo in their email avatar, will automatically be offered a blue tick.

It comes weeks after billions of Gmail and Microsoft Outlook users were issued a “red alert” warning over scams.

A report, from cyber defence company BlueVoyant, has found a 240% increase in email scams targeting users, with phishing scams that are often hard to spot.

The security experts have issued a new warning to everyone who uses the two email sites, saying: “One of the more complicated ways threat actors evade detection involves multiple redirect paths, steering consumers to spoofed domains while redirecting presumed threat hunters or phishing analysts to an error page.

"These evasion mechanisms include User Agent or IP restrictions and blocklisting, with significant emphasis placed on bot and crawler detection.

“The purpose of this type of redirection is to hide the phishing content on a single website by diverting threat hunters elsewhere, i.e. the target's official domain, a google search, etc."

Offering advice on what to do if you have been targeted by a phishing scam, consumer experts Which? said: “"If you have fallen victim to a scam, contact your bank immediately to suspend your card and account.

"Your bank or building society will then be able to provide specialist support from their scam unit.

"Ultimately, if you have any doubt about the authenticity of a text message or email, it’s probably a scam.

"Take a minute to think about the message; were you expecting it, have you checked for spelling mistakes and double-checked the sender's address.

"If the email address from the sender doesn’t look like it’s from a genuine address, don’t click on it.

"If you think it is a scam, you can forward the email as an attachment to Action Fraud who will investigate, or alternatively forward it to report@phishing.gov.uk."