Safer conversations in Messages with Verified SMS and Spam Protection
In addition to enhancing messaging on Android with Rich Communication Services (RCS) and bringing you helpful features with Messages, we also want to provide a safer messaging experience. Today we have two new updates to share on that front.
Trustworthy business messages with Verified SMS
SMS messages help businesses share useful information with consumers, things like one-time passwords, account alerts or appointment confirmations. Yet sometimes it can be difficult to trust the identity of these messages, which are often sent from a random number. Some messages may even come from bad actors pretending to be from businesses you trust and ask for private information or link to dangerous websites—this is called phishing.
Verified SMS for Messages, rolling out today in a number of countries, will help you confirm the true identity of the business that’s texting you. The feature works by verifying, on a per-message basis, that content is sent by a specific business. When a message is verified—which is done without sending your messages to Google—you’ll see the business name and logo as well as a verification badge in the message thread.
1-800-Flowers, Banco Bradesco, Kayak, Payback, and SoFi are among the first brands to send messages with Verified SMS. Google Pay India and verification codes from Google will also be enrolled in Verified SMS. And more businesses are signing up to use Verified SMS every day.
Verified SMS is rolling out gradually on Messages in nine countries, starting in the U.S., India, Mexico, Brazil, the U.K., France, Philippines, Spain and Canada, with more to come. Verified SMS is just one of our efforts to improve your messages with businesses; we also continue to work on enhancing the chats you have on Messages with Rich Business Messaging (RBM).
Real-time spam detection
In addition to verifying the businesses sending you messages, we are working on protecting you from spam in Messages.
With Spam protection for Messages, we warn you of suspected spam and unsafe websites we’ve detected. If you see a suspected spam warning in Messages you can help us improve our spam models by letting us know if it’s spam or not. You can also report spam texts in Messages at anytime, and block the conversation so you won’t receive future messages.
Spam protection, which works with your message data while keeping your messages private, has been available over the past year in a number of countries and is now rolling out broadly in the U.S.
