Google+ Brings Identity Verification Badges

With a long battle against fake identities that even resulted in a lot of controversy and harsh criticism on Google’s real name policy, Google finally has come up with a new feature to overcome the problem. Wen-Ai Yu, a member of the Google+ team announced via her Google+ account, “We’re starting to roll out verification badges on profiles so you can be sure the person you’re adding to a circle is who they claim to be.”

Initially the verification badges will be available for celebrities, public figures and even people who are popular on Google+, but later these will be rolled out to the other Google+ users as well.

These verification badges appear as grey checkmarks next to a profile name and when you move your mouse over them they expand to say it is a “verified name.”

The purpose of the verification badges is to help users know whether a particular profile is the official profile of some celebrity so that they may want to add to their Circles to become their followers.

“When you visit the profile of a celebrity or public figure, you’ll see a verification badge next to their profile name. This will help you easily determine which profiles are owned by real, verified people,”

So Google is dead set on ensuring that its real name policy is followed. Currently users who are in violation of the policy are given a 4- day notice to change their names or they can say goodbye to Google+ forever. This strict adherence is not accepted warmly by many of Google+ users. So lets see what will be the future of the verification badges.

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