Google is enhancing its security features day by day for it’s products. If we remember about our last article for Google’s security -Company has started to notifying Android users when any new device is added to their account. And now Google is introducing new security features to warn their users about unsafe links and senders.
As per Google’s official feed, they have started rolling out two new security features for Gmail users which will warn you about unsafe links, senders and help you to keep your email safer.
Security Feature 1:
Google follows Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records for your domain & DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) standard in order to identify spam messages. On Web or Android, if you receive an email which cannot be authenticated using SPF and DKIM, there will be a question mark (?) appear in place of the sender’s profile photo, corporate logo, or avatar.
Note: Its not necessary that message, which is not authenticated, must be a spam. Sometimes authentication doesn’t work for real organizations when they send emails to big groups (mailing list).
How to check if your Gmail message is authenticated or not?
As per above screenshot, if there is a question mark next to sender’s name, i.e. message is not authenticated. In that case you should be careful while downloading any attachment or replying to that message.
Security Feature 2:
On the web, if you receive a message which contains some link to dangerous sites known for phishing, malware and unwanted software, It will show a warning message when you click on the link. This feature will improve the Safe Browsing protection level to various web browsers today.
We would like to mention here that its not necessary that if sender is not authenticated or link that has been shown potential dangerous might or might not pose any threat to user. Google has added warning message, so that user always think at least once about safety before accessing those dangerous links or non-authenticated links.