Last Summer former U.S. national security contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on National Security Agency’s electronic spying programs. A lot of major U.S. internet companies were named in the leaked documents, even though they have denied ever knowing about the programs, most companies have since then devoted their time and resources to beefing up their services in order to retain users’ trust. Google today announced that it is improving security of its popular email service, Gmail. From now on Gmail is always going to use an encrypted HTTPS connection, whenever users check or send an email.
it was actually back in 2010 when Gmail made HTTPS a default setting, and it has supported this protocol since the day it launched. This recent change means that it would be extremely hard for anyone who wants to snooping in on emails as they travel to and from the user and Gmail’s servers, even if users are on a public Wi-Fi network.
All email messages sent and received through Gmail are “100%” encrypted. This ensures their safety as they travel between the user and Gmail’s servers, as well as between Google’s data centers. Google says that beefing up the latter was a “top priority” after last Summer’s revelations.
The company also reveals that last year Gmail had 99.978% availability, this averages down to less than two hours of service disruption per user for the entire year.
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