I wrote a short article on Gmail, “via”, and eMessage over at the IBM Unica Blog. The full text is available below as well.

We have been seeing a lot of discussion among senders about the new Gmail feature that people are referring to as “via“. This is Google’s way of notifying its users that the mail they are reading was not correctly authenticated, thus resulting in a “Sender’s Name via otherdomain.com” showing in the Gmail mailbox display.

Many senders understandably do not wish to have this displayed on their emails, fearing that their clients will think the email is a fake or worse. Google’s advice is to publish an SPF or DKIM record – a correct one of course! – to make the “via” vanish.

Digitally signing mail correctly is also crucial for good deliverability at most major ISPs, among them Hotmail and Yahoo, as well as being an all-around best practice. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to lose by signing your mail, and much to gain!

Happy news for Unica eMessage clients: we pre-emptively set up all our clients’ outbound mail with an appropriate digital signature that signs for our clients’ domains, not our own. This keeps the Gmail display looking like it always did prior to the introduction of “via“, as well as improving deliverability at the ISPs that take DKIM, DK, SPF and/or Sender ID into account. Since there is as yet no industry standard for which signing method should be used, we cover all the bases for you!

Digitally yours,

-IBM EMM