The company is now verifying business communications for you to know, they’re real and not scam – but there’s a catch

We know the drill, text message spam, and robocalls are the twin plagues teaching phone users a harsh lesson: You know, Trust no one, period.

Although measures to block those annoyances are hustling, two efforts are proposing a different solution that amounts to “trust someone if not anything.” The blue-checkmark approach of social networking that verifies users and applies it to texts and calls from a legitimate business, very well seen on Instagram. If a user is valid, a blue-checkmark appears before their user name.

The higher-profile venture comes from Google, announced on 12th December 2019, what it calls “Verified SMS.” The technology lets registered businesses send texts that in Google’s Messages app for Android with the logo and title of their choice, plus a checkmark verification badge, this allows users to differentiate between legitimacy and scam.

The whole process takes place without Google seeing the content of any messages. Instead, a company’s agent app and its customer’s Message app sends paired encryption keys and then compare “hashes,” a mathematical abstraction of the messages to confirm that both the sender and the content match. Commonly, this encryption is seen on WhatsApp to prevent third party intervention and scam. This required exchange necessitates a data connection, which is not true of garden variety SMS.

Google lists around 1 to 800 participating firms like Flowers, Banco Bradesco, Kayak, Payback, and Sofi; it’s also using Verified SMS to send its own two-step verification text messages. One of the firms providing Verified SMS services to their customers, and the business communications company Twilio lists Expensify as another early adopter.

Simon Khalaf Twilio’s senior vice president and general manager for messaging said,

“As rich channels for business messaging (WhatsApp, RCS, Messenger, and so on) pop up with features like profile branding and verification, SMS has to keep up. Twilio isn’t currently changing for the technology,”

in an email sent by a publicist.

However, the catch is that Verified SMS only works within Google’s Message app. It isn’t compatible with the one Samsung provides on its Galaxy phones and certainly not with Apple’s Messages app. Google’s message app is even more limited in its potential audience than RCS messaging, the long-stalled update to text messaging that Google has been pushing wireless carriers to support. The Verified SMS doesn’t do anything for phone calls, but third parties are working on that.

Sophos principal research scientist Paul Ducklin said,

“Whether any other operating system or apps will ever get a service that’s compatible or even similar, remains to be seen. The whole system still seems a bit experimental, and it’s only available in eight countries at the moment, so it’s probably too early to say how it will play out.”

In an email sent by a publicist.

In August 2018, a Little Rock, Arkansas, company called First Orion and started testing its caller idea service called “Engage” that puts a company’s name, logo, why its calling message on a phone’s screen. But the technology doesn’t limit to a particular smartphone or app; its wireless carriers have to support it on their networks. First Orion lists “Sprint and T-mobile” participating in the process. T-Mobile was among the first companies to use Engage’s branded calling service for its customer support.

In February, during a demo at the MWC Barcelona trade show, First Orion executives stated that T-Mobile saw its call pick-up rate go from 30 to 80% after featuring their Engage service. But, that leaves two giants in wireless carriers AT&T and Verizon, currently not supporting this feature.

Gavin Macomber, First Orion’s senior vice president for marketing and communications, “The other carriers have been slow to move here,” he acknowledged in an email. Gavin estimated that about 20% of U.S mobile users could receive Engage branded calls from companies.

However, an underlying fact is that First Orion’s service only helps when companies decide to pay for it, bases on their call volume and the level of personalization in a call. Macomber said,

“Brands will pay more to display an urgent, detailed fraud message.”

Quite evidently, First Orion will have competition at some point: In August, Twilio announced its own verified call service that will provide the same sort of branded identification of calls from companies. As of now, it’s like a lot of products in tech but confined within an invitation-only beta.