With the popularity of Gmail on the rise, it’s no surprise that vindictive software would want to jump right on in and get to interfering with the platform. Google understands that safety and reliability is one of the most important aspects that we look for when utilizing an email service. As part of Google’s way of improving the security on Gmail, Google has beefed up their protection by adding Content Security Policy. This development is the newest along with improvements such as serving images through secure proxy servers, and requiring HTTPS. Content Security Policy or CSP for short, goes a step further in securing your email account and keeping all of your personal messages safe.
So what exactly is Content Security Policy? Well to start off, Google’s Chrome Web Store and many other sites have extensions that you can add to your browser. These extensions pretty much add-on more features for your browser to utilize while in use. Unfortunately not every extension that is available is safe for your browser. Some extensions may conduct bad behavior such as loading suspicious code that could possibly interfere with your Gmail session. Other extensions may even go a step further and load malicious malware that can compromise your Gmail account and jeopardize your information. Now where does Content Security Policy come into play? Well, the new software strides on in and stops an extension from uploading unsafe code.
According to Google, “Most popular (and well-behaved) extensions have already been updated to work with the CSP standard, but if you happen to have any trouble with an extension, try installing its latest version from your browser’s web store.” As you can see, a handful of extensions has received the CSP update and the way things look, more add-on’s will get it too. A majority of these extensions that Google is talking about comes from their Chrome Web Store, so if you do have any problems, you’ll have to go there to update your extension. The CSP standard is only available for the desktop version of Chrome due to the high usage of extensions the browser gets. Adding CSP to Chrome is just another way Google can help make your Gmail experience more safe and enjoyable.