More Secure GMail

July 25th, 2008 (8:00am) Mike Gunderloy 4 CommentsTweet This

Google’s GMail has always used the secure https: protocol to protect logins, but it would allow you to switch to an insecure http: session after you were connected. While this can speed things up, it’s potentially a problem for those of us who are on-the-go: unencrypted mail traffic can be snooped on by anyone in WiFi range of your laptop.

That’s why its nice to see the new “Browser Connection” item in GMail’s settings; you can use this to force all of your GMail sessions to use https: throughout, no matter how you get there. This may cause a problem with some applications like Gmail for mobile, but there are workarounds. If you’re the mobile sort of web worker, you should definitely turn this setting on. Check it even if you’re deskbound: on my account the new setting defaulted to https:-only.

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Comments (4)

Hopefully they push this out to Pro accounts soon.

JT — 11:23 AM on July 25, 2008 Reply
Most people don’t know, you can force a secure session just by typing an ” s ” at the end of http as in…. “https”. simple and easy.

cspusa — 2:03 PM on July 25, 2008 Reply
Yeah I do that, but it will be nice to have this feature too for the times when I forget to add the s.

JT — 2:48 PM on July 25, 2008 Reply
10x for the tip mate! I suddenly applied this setting inside my account ;-)

andrea — 1:34 PM on July 28, 2008 Reply