Apple VMC Support Update

For those interested in BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) sender logos, you likely already know that for maximum possible display of your BIMI sender logo, you need to have a CMC (Common Mark Certificate) or VMC (Verified Mark Certificate). Preferably a VMC, is CMC is currently accepted only by Google.

Today, you can purchase a VMC from one of two Certificate Authorities, Digicert and Entrust.

Apple recently posted an update regarding what certificates they support: Changes to Certification Authorities and certificates. This update impacts VMCs provided by Entrust; VMCs sold by Entrust will no longer be accepted by Apple, if the certificate was issued after November 15, 2024.

Entrust confirmed this in a recent notification to affected customers, shared with me by a reader: “Apple has posted an update that Verified Mark Certificates issued from Entrust public roots after November 15, 2024 will no longer be supported on Apple systems. Apple has indicated that these changes are in beta releases and have not gone into effect in production Apple operating systems. Apple has not yet communicated when these changes will go into effect. According to the Apple update, VMCs issued on or before November 15, 2024 will remain supported until their natural expiration.”

This means that if you publish a BIMI logo with a VMC from Entrust, the logo will eventually stop displaying at Apple iCloud domains (icloud.com, me.com and mac.com).

Companies utilizing a VMC from Digicert are unaffected.

I also covered this topic in a recent “Ask Al” video for Valimail, linked here and embedded above, but a reader reached out to me asking about this, so I thought it would be good to mention something here on Spam Resource as well.

(Want more videos like this? I publish a new video every Friday on the Valimail Youtube channel -- find the channel here and the specific playlist here.)