Google has announced that all emails coming to and sent from their servers will now be encrypted using a HTTPS connection.
The only drawback to using an HTTPS connection will be in terms of speed, but it is a small price to pay for staying secure.
The encryption will work regardless of the device a user has, be it a mobile phone, a computer or a tablet.
Gmail has always supported HTTPS since it's launch in 2004, before the option was made default in 2010, a blog post by a Gmail Engineer said.
Here is a noteworthy statement from their announcement,
"In addition, every single email message you send or receive—100 percent of them—is encrypted while moving internally. This ensures that your messages are safe not only when they move between you and Gmail's servers, but also as they move between Google's data centers—something we made a top priority after last summer’s revelations."
One can easily guess that the last three words in the above sentence, which indirectly translates to “the NSA's snooping into people’s data”, which was revealed by whistle-blower Edward Snowden last year. Google are furiously working on protecting their users' privacy, and this recent security enhancement for Gmail would be welcomed by all users.
Google have also said that their engineers are working 24x7 to make sure their servers are always up and running. They claim that in 2013, Gmail was available 99.978% of the time for all users, which averages to less than two hours disruption for a user for the entire year.
via: Softpedia