GMail aims to crush phishing with new labs feature

Gmail Labs is a goldmine of interesting new features waiting to make their way through Gmail’s doors and become fully integrated features.

The latest addition to the labs set is the “super-trustworthy anti-phishing key”. The idea is relatively simple, to insert a tiny key icon next to senders that have officially been confirmed by Gmail as “super-trustworthy”.

According to Google, “super-trustworthy” means:

1. the sender, usually a financial institution, is a target of phishers,
2. all of the sender’s email is authenticated with DKIM
3. Gmail rejects any fake messages that claim to come from this sender, but actually don’t.

Google has had its fair share of trouble with phishing, in February the company experienced a widespread phishing attack after messages were being sent randomly across their GTalk service inviting users to click a TinyURL link which would then send users to a separate site requesting they enter their GMail usernames and passwords.

This new Gmail Labs feature currently involves only two companies: eBay and PayPal (no Google?). The reason being, ‘passing the test’ to being ‘super trust-worthy’ is considerably difficult and complex (as it should be), but Google hope to add more senders in the future.

To enable the feature, visit GMail Labs in your Gmail settings panel, enable the feature and don’t forget to click save!