While Gmail is already quite a safe place to send and receive electronic communication back and forth between colleagues and friends and family, there can never be too much security when it comes to your personal information and privacy data. Google understands this which is why they’re always looking for ways to improve the security of their services, including Gmail, and today they’re introducing more features to help improve the security standards of the Gmail app both on the web and on mobile. This follows a recently added feature where Google aims to warn users when or if they are trying to send an email from an email address that isn’t secure.
Today, Gmail will be adding more warnings to the security feature set so users will be better prepared and more aware of potential risks. These include a new warning when Gmail suspects that clicked links in emails may be unsafe to browse on the web. This isn’t to be confused with the safe browsing feature itself which was already part of Gmail, warning users about unsafe links prior to today’s changes, but if users click a link inside of an email, the new warning will now pop up if Gmail thinks that browsing the site may be a risk to the user’s data.
In addition to alerting users about browsing sites they were led to by clicking a link from inside their emails, Gmail is making improvements to the protection from state-sponsored attacks by providing users with enhancements to the warnings they receive in the event that a government-backed attacker is trying to gain access to their information. As part of the enhancements, Google will be introducing a new full-page warning complete with instructions in the event Gmail suspects a state-sponsored attack on a user, and Google states that although these new full-page warnings may be the only alert that displays, users may still see the existing warnings that currently appear in these situations. Google is also partnering with companies like Yahoo, Microsoft, and Comcast to enhance the state of encrypted emails by submitting a new draft IETF specification that should ensure emails are emails are delivered through encrypted channels only.
