It is apparent that email has become a crucial component of daily communication. And whether you're sending a job application or communicating with a loved one, your emails should be safe and secure.

Gmail's AI-powered protections prevent more than 99.9% of spam, phishing, and malware from reaching inboxes and block roughly 15 billion unwanted emails each day. But, some 20 years after Gmail's birth, the risks we confront are more sophisticated and pressing than ever.

To keep your inbox even safer and spam-free, we're establishing new rules for bulk senders — those who send more than 5,000 messages to Gmail addresses in a single day.

Focus on email validation

Many bulk senders fail to properly safeguard and configure their systems, allowing attackers to simply lurk in their midst. To assist address this, we've focused on a critical part of email security: ensuring that a sender is who they claim to be. As simple as it sounds, given the internet's network of outmoded and unreliable systems, it can often be hard to determine who sent an email.

Last year, we began requiring some type of authentication for emails sent to Gmail addresses. And the quantity of unauthenticated messages received by Gmail users has dropped by 75%, allowing us to tidy inboxes while blocking billions of harmful communications with more precision.

New rules of Google for email senders

By February 2024, Gmail will begin to require bulk senders

Authenticate their email: You shouldn't have to worry about the complexities of email security standards, but you should be able to trust the source of an email. As a result, we require people who send large numbers of emails to strongly authenticate their messages using well-established best practices. Ultimately, this will seal loopholes used by attackers to threaten everyone who uses email.

Enable easy unsubscription: You should not have to go through hoops to avoid receiving unsolicited communications from a certain email sender. It should take just one click. 

So we're requiring major senders to give Gmail recipients the chance to unsubscribe from commercial email with a single click, and to process unsubscription requests within two days. We've developed these rules on open standards so that if senders apply them, everyone who uses email will benefit.

Ensure they're sending the right email: Nobody likes spam, and Gmail already has several methods for keeping undesirable messages out of your inbox. To add another layer of protection, Google will enforce a clear spam rate limitation that senders must adhere to in order to ensure that Gmail recipients are not inundated with unwelcome messages. This is an industry first, and as a result, your mailbox should contain even less spam.

Conclusion

These procedures should be considered basic email hygiene, and many senders currently follow the majority of these requirements. Google provides clear assistance to those that need help improving their systems before enforcement begins in February 2024.

These adjustments are similar to a tune-up for the email world, and by addressing a few issues under the hood, Google can keep email functioning smoothly. However, like a tune-up, this is not a one-time exercise. Keeping email secure, user-friendly, and spam-free needs ongoing collaboration and vigilance from the whole email community. Google will keep working together to keep your inbox safe.