14 DAY TRIAL // Google revealed that its campaign against phishing emails seem to be paying off. According to the company’s numbers 91.4 percent of the non-spam emails sent to Gmail users come from authenticated senders.
Furthermore, the company says that they have all adopted one or more of the following email authentication standards: DKIM (DomainKey Identified Email) or SPF (Sender Policy Framework).
“Adoption of these standards is widespread across the industry, dramatically reducing spammers’ ability to impersonate domains that users trust, and making email phishing less effective,” Google said.
A large percentage of the emails sent to Gmail users are signed according to the DKIM standard, namely 76.9 percent, while 89.1 percent come via SMTP servers authenticated with the SPF standard. 74.7 percent of all incoming mail is protected by both standards.
The company also takes the time to continue pushing its plans to have emails without spam. “As more domains implement authentication, phishers are forced to target domains that are not yet protected. If you own a domain that sends email, the most effective action you can take to help us and prevent spammers from impersonating your domain is to set up DKIM, SPF and DMARC. Check our help pages on DKIM, SPF, DMARC to get started,” they advise.
The fight against spammers is unlikely to be over anytime soon, but Google and the Internet community, in general, have taken important steps into this direction. As they mention, Gmail has been an early adopter of the authentication standards and they’ll continue to advocate for them.
“We hope that publishing these results will inspire more domain owners to adopt the standards that protect them from impersonation and help keep email inboxes safe and clean,” Google says.
Hopefully, future reports will show even better numbers that will mirror the world’s efforts to get rid of spam. It would be particularly interesting to get a similar report from other mail service providers.