Google to boost email security

Google plans to improve security on a number of its services including Google Mail, Docs and Calendar following criticism from US security experts.

The group of 38 computer scientists called on Google to use a standard encryption service, known as HTTPS, commonly used in online banking services to protect data while in transit.

Google uses HTTPS, which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, as an option in Google Mail, but it is disabled by default.

The security group said that few people know about it.

"Google customers who compose emails, documents, spreadsheets, presentations and calendar plans from a public connection face a very real risk of data theft and snooping, even by unsophisticated attackers," the group wrote in an open letter to Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive.

"Tools to steal information are widely available on the internet," the group warned.

Responding to concerns, Alma Whitten, a software engineer for Google, wrote in a blog post that the web giant is "currently looking into whether it would make sense to turn on HTTPS as the default for all Gmail users".

Whitten also turned the attention on competitors stating that Google would like to see all other major webmail services provide the same level of encryption.

The security group pointed out that Microsoft's Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Facebook and MySpace are also vulnerable to these attacks.

If you use Google Mail and want to activate HTTPS now, click on Settings and scroll down to Browser Connection at the very bottom of the screen. Click on 'Always Use Https' and then Save Changes to activate the feature.