Google to warn Gmail users over unencrypted letters

PanARMENIAN.Net - When users click on an email, they likely don't think much about the swift journey it made from the sender's inbox to theirs. But some mail providers still send content over unencrypted connections, so Google plans to notify Gmail users if this is the case, PC Magazine reports.

Google already defaults to HTTPS—the Web prefix indicating an encrypted connection—in Search, Gmail, and Drive, and started encrypting all Gmail messages last year. And Google said today that encrypted messaging is on the rise: Since 2013, the number of encrypted emails that Gmail received from non-Gmail senders increased from 33 percent to 61 percent. Because of that final 39 percent, though, Google will serve up warnings.

"While these threats do not affect Gmail-to-Gmail communication, they may affect messaging between providers," researcher Elie Bursztein and engineer Nicolas Lidzborski wrote in a blog post.

Those stats are part of a multi-year study on the evolution of email security that Google published this week.

Unsurprisingly, it found that email is better protected now than it was two years ago—before the Snowden revelations.

Google also uncovered malicious DNS servers publishing fake routing information to email servers, allowing attackers to censor or alter messages before they arrive in your inbox.

The good news is, more than 94 percent of inbound Gmail messages carry some form of authentication. Technologies that protect against phishing and impersonation have "become the norm," according to Google research.