14 DAY TRIAL // As part of the Safer Internet Day, Google has announced updates to the Gmail Web client interface that will make it much easier to spot conversations carried out over insecure channels and via non-authenticated email providers (usually bots).
Google has always kept Gmail up to date with the latest security practices, and the company has taken another step towards making Gmail even much safer to use than before.
Arriving to your Gmail Web interface this week are two updates.
First, the company plans to show a broken red lock right next to a sender/receiver's name and email, for the purpose of highlighting email conversations that do not benefit from the security of TLS encryption.
Most major email providers today offer some sort of TLS support, but there are those people who continue to use default email servers, usually with custom domains or shared hosting plans, which don't carry out conversations via an encrypted channel.
The second announced change takes aim at user avatars, and Google plans to show a red question mark instead of the sender/recipient picture.
This measure will be taken every time Gmail can't authenticate the source of the message, which in most cases is because of automated email bots or because of other email providers that don't implement the most recent email security protocols.
Also as part of its Safer Internet Day initiative, Google is also giving away 2GB of extra Google Drive storage to anyone who completes a Security Checkup for their Google account.
