Brand Indicators for Message Identification, or BIMI (), is a specification allowing for the display of brand logos next to authenticated

e-mails Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving digital messages using electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the late–20th century as the ...

Design

There are two parts to BIMI: a method for domain owners to publish the location of their indicators, and a means for mail transfer agents (MTAs) to verify the authenticity of the indicator. To implement BIMI, companies need a valid

DMARC Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) is an email authentication protocol. It is designed to give email domain owners the ability to protect their domain from unauthorized use, commonly known as email spoofing. Th ...

DNS The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed name service that provides a naming system for computers, services, and other resources on the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various informatio ...

record with a policy of either quarantine or reject, an exact square

logo A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name that it represents, as in ...

for the

brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's goods or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and ...

in SVG Tiny P/S format, and a DNS TXT record for the domain indicating the URI location of the SVG file. The only supported transport for the SVG

URI Uri may refer to: Places * Canton of Uri, a canton in Switzerland * Úri, a village and commune in Hungary * Uri, Iran, a village in East Azerbaijan Province * Uri, Jammu and Kashmir, a town in India * Uri (island), off Malakula Island in V ...

HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It uses encryption for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protoc ...

. The BIMI DNS record is in the following format: (The a= part is optional. When present, it defines an ''evidence document''; the only current form of this file is called a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC), described below. When absent, the BIMI record is considered ''self-asserted''.) Additionally, services such as Gmail require that a VMC be acquired and presented with the TXT record in order for the brand logo to be displayed in the inbox. These factors alone will not guarantee a BIMI logo will be displayed as heuristics (like spam and spoofing) and reputation will be a key part in BIMI validity. To query the value of the default._bimi TXT record for a given domain, one can use the dig command-line tool. For example, the following command will query the TXT record for the

example.com The domain names example.com, example.net, example.org, and example.edu are second-level domain names in the Domain Name System of the Internet. They are reserved by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) at the direction of the Inter ...

domain: dig +short default._bimi.example.com TXT.

Implementations

A working group of several companies named "BIMI Group" has formed to develop and support standardization of BIMI in

IETF The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet standard, Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster ...

. As of June 2023 the following e-mail services have implemented support for BIMI:

History

The BIMI Working Group was founded in 2019.

Contributors

The contributors of BIMI specifications, called the BIMI Group, also called Authindicators Working Group, include: * Agari * Comcast * Google * LinkedIn * Return Path from Validity * Valimail * Verizon Media (Yahoo)

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite web , title=BIMI Support by Mailbox Provider , url=https://bimigroup.org/bimi-infographic/ , website=BIMI Group , access-date=2023-06-09 {{Cite web , title=BIMI for Non-Trademarked Logos , url=https://bimigroup.org/bimi-for-non-trademarked-logos/ , access-date=2023-06-09 , website=BIMI Group {{Cite web , title=BIMI Rolling Out to All Apple Inboxes in Fall 2022 , url=https://bimigroup.org/bimi-rolling-out-to-all-apple-inboxes-in-fall-2022/ , access-date=2023-06-09 , website=BIMI Group {{Cite web , title=La Poste Announces Support for BIMI , url=https://bimigroup.org/la-poste-announces-support-for-bimi/ , access-date=2023-06-09 , website=BIMI Group {{Cite web , title=Using BIMI in Fastmail , url=https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/7002542139663-Using-BIMI-in-Fastmail , access-date=2023-06-09 , website=Fastmail Help Center {{Cite web , title=Add a brand logo to outgoing email with BIMI , url=https://support.google.com/a/answer/10911320?hl=en , access-date=2023-06-09 , website=Google Workspace Help {{Cite web , title=Advancing email security for Gmail and beyond with BIMI , url=https://workspace.google.com/blog/product-announcements/bringing-bimi-to-gmail-in-google-workspace , access-date=2023-06-09 , website=Google Workspace Blog {{Cite web , title=BIMI, Mail , url=https://senders.yahooinc.com/bimi/ , access-date=2023-06-09 , website=Yahoo Developer Network {{Cite web , title=Prepare your email server for BIMI support in Apple Mail , url=https://developer.apple.com/support/bimi , access-date=2023-06-09 , website=Apple Developer {{Cite web , title=BIMI support in AOL Mail , url=https://help.aol.com/articles/bimi-support-in-aol-mail , access-date=2023-06-09 , website=AOL Help Email authentication