How verification works

What “Vetted” means

Some loops carry a “Vetted” badge. That badge says one specific thing: we received an email that proves the reviewer actually applied to the company they’re writing about. It does not say the review is accurate, fair, or complete. It says the application happened.

How we verify

The reviewer forwards us one email from the company’s hiring system: a recruiter message, an application confirmation, an interview invite, or a rejection notice. We do two checks on it.

First, we verify the email’s DKIM signature. DKIM is a cryptographic signature that the sending system attaches to every email. We check that the signature is valid and that it was added by the applicant tracking system the company actually uses (Greenhouse, Workday, Lever, and so on). DKIM is hard to fake.

Second, we ask a language model to read the email and tell us which company it’s about. We compare that to the company on the loop. If they match, the badge sticks.

What we don’t store

We do not keep the email. The reviewer’s name, the recruiter’s contact info, any salary numbers, any internal links, and the body text are all extracted at the moment the email arrives and discarded as soon as we finish the check.

What we keep on the loop: the verification status, a timestamp, and the domain that DKIM-signed the email (e.g. greenhouse-mail.io). If a verification attempt doesn’t pass, we also record a category for why (signature failed, company didn’t match, or we couldn’t pull the company info out of the email) and the time it happened, so we can show the author what to fix.

Failure information is only visible to the loop’s author. Other readers never see that an attempt happened or how it ended.

What we don’t claim

The badge is not a claim that the review is correct. We do not check:

• Whether the interview happened the way the reviewer described it.
• Whether the reviewer’s opinion of the experience is fair.
• Whether the people involved would describe events the same way.

The badge is narrow on purpose. We can defend “an email from this company’s hiring system reached us and passed DKIM” because that’s a fact. We can’t defend “this review is accurate” because we weren’t in the room.

If a review is wrong about you

If you believe a review on Authentic Loops is inaccurate, identifies someone it shouldn’t, or violates an agreement, email hello@authenticloops.com. We read every report and act on the ones that have merit. The verification badge doesn’t shield a review from takedown.

See our Terms of Service for the full reporting policy.