Gmail will show company logos with authenticated mail senders

Gmail will soon show company logos on senders if Google can authenticate the sender. For example, a user must be able to clearly recognize that an e-mail actually comes from a bank when the bank’s logo appears with the sender.

For showing the company logos goes Gmail Using Brand Indicators for Message Identification. Within this one BIMI standard a company’s logo is only shown if the mail provider can confirm that the company is actually the body sending the mail and that it is therefore not a malicious person trying to imitate a company.

BIMI does this by letting companies authenticate their emails with Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance, or dmarc. Companies and organizations must authenticate their emails with Sender Policy Framework, also known as SPF, or with Domain Keys Identified Mail, also known as DKIM. Then they can deploy dmarc. Then they can provide Google with their validated logos with a Verified Mark Certificate.

As soon as companies or organizations meet these conditions and pass all Google anti-abuse checks, Gmail will display the company logo where avatars now appear. In the smartphone app, users will therefore already see the logo in the inbox; in the web version, users must first click through to an email.

Gmail users don’t have to do anything to see the company logos. Google says it plans to implement the feature in Gmail in the coming weeks. This mail service is therefore not the first to support BIMI; Yahoo mail already does this.

The Bank of America logo coming soon to Gmail thanks to BIMI