Google announced today on its blog that to make Gmail even more secure it will from now on force its web based email service to use an encrypted HTTPS connection at all times.
While Google doesn’t specifically mention the countless reports of surveillance by government agencies in recent months, it does say the change means “no one can listen in on your messages as they go back and forth between you and Gmail’s servers—no matter if you’re using public WiFi or logging in from your computer, phone or tablet.
In addition, every single email message you send or receive—100% of them—is encrypted while moving internally. This ensures that your messages are safe not only when they move between you and Gmail’s servers, but also as they move between Google’s data centers—something we made a top priority after last summer’s revelations.
Google has long supported secure HTTPS connections in Gmail and back in 2010 made it the default option for accessing Gmail despite a tradeoff between security and latency that comes with a sometimes slower HTTPS connection.
Google also wants to let you know that reliability is just as important to it as security. The company said today that Gmail experienced 99.978% uptime last year, which amounts to around “less than two hours of disruption for a user for the entire year.”