GMail will soon receive a new layer of security in the form of notifications telling the users that an email has arrived over an unencrypted connection.
Google's online security team said that the added security aims to protect Gmail users from the latest security challenges online. Gmail's security engineering team lead Nicolas Lidzborski and Elie Bursztein from the Anti-Fraud and Abuse Research worked together with the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois in developing methods to help identify emails from unencrypted connections.
GMail's new feature will inform users when emails come from unencrypted connections. From there it is up to the user whether or not they want to proceed in replying the email, but at least they are informed of it, Ubergizmo reported.
The team stated that from December in 2013 to October 2015, the percentage of encrypted TLS that were sent from Gmail to non-Gmail recipients increased from 60 to 80 percent, suggesting that email exchanges from Gmail to other email services and vice versa are more secure with no "third-party" listening to conversations.
They also found out that 94 percent of inbound messages to Gmail can now be authenticated, according to Tech Crunch. But at the same time, these researchers also found that there are parts of the Internet that actively prevent message encryption by tampering with requests to initiate SSL connections.
Google said it has been working closely with industry partners through Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG) to strengthen "opportunistic TLS" by using technologies that Google pioneered with Chrome to protect websites against interception.
The giant search engine will also launch new in-product warnings for Gmail users, alerting them when they receive emails through non-encrypted connections. The feature is expected to roll out to Gmail users in the next few months.