A verified account is a service that has been linked to a Gravatar profile using the service’s login credentials. We consider this to be “Verified” because the Gravatar user has proven they own that service’s login credentials. Verified accounts are verified at the moment they are added to the profile. We currently don’t periodically re-validate the service to ensure it still exists or is still owned by the user (in cases where an account may be taken away from a user).
What a verified account isn’t
A verified account doesn’t prove that the person is who they say they are, it just proves that the owner of the Gravatar account also owns the Verified Service account. If you trust either of the accounts to be the real person, then you can trust that they are both the real person. If one of them is a fake or spoof account, then they are likely both fake accounts.
Adding verified accounts
From the Verified accounts section of the profile editor you can pick from the list of supported services:
Once a service has been selected you will need to verify it externally by clicking the connect button. For example, here is Instagram:
A window will open asking you to login and confirm the connection. This happens outside of Gravatar and Gravatar does not have access to your account details.
Mastadon
Verifying a Mastadon account requires some additional steps. These are explained in the Gravatar profile editor.
To summarize:
- Add your Gravatar profile URL to your Mastadon profile meta data.
- Copy the provide verification link code into Gravatar.
- Verify your account
Other WordPress
Verifying a WordPress site requires to add a Gutenberg block on any post or page. If you don’t use Gutenberg on your WordPress site, you’ll have to add a verification link instead. You can put this link on any post or page of your site. Edit or create a post or page and switch the editor to “code view”, then copy the following code and replace the REPLACE_ME text by your avatar profile URL, which should look like https://gravatar.com/GRAVATAR_USERNAME:
<a href="REPLACE_ME" rel="me" >My Gravatar</a>For example, if your Gravatar username is “penguin”, the code will look like:
<a href="https://gravatar.com/penguin" rel="me" >My Gravatar</a>After adding this link to your WordPress site, you can hit the “Verify account” button on Gravatar’s side.
Facebook made unfortunately some changes to their API, removing access to public profile URLs. More info: [1] [2].
You can still verify your Facebook account to authorize your Gravatar account. However, we can no longer share a direct link to a Facebook profile for new verifications.
If you verified your account before these changes, your profile URL will remain visible.
Show or Hide Verified Accounts on Your Gravatar Profile
You can choose to display or hide the services you verified on your public Gravatar profile. This feature allows you to control the visibility of the verified services displayed on your profile page, helping you manage how others can find and connect with you online.
In the sidebar menu’s Verified Accounts section, toggle the option to display or hide all verified accounts.
In a specific verified account section, toggle the option to control the visibility of that account individually.
Note: Even if you choose to hide verified accounts from your public profile, they will still be accessible through the Gravatar API. Learn more.
Reorder Verified Accounts
In the Connected Accounts section, click Reorder accounts and drag each account to set your preferred display order on your public profile.
Gravatar Support
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