Information Week – Google: We’re Encrypting Everyone’s Gmail Automatically:
Whether or not the timing of this announcement has anything to do with Google’s recent actions in the Chinese market is unknown. The company today said that it is switching Gmail access to https for all users by default.
The company wrote in a blog post, “Using https helps protect data from being snooped by third parties, such as in public wifi hotspots. We initially left the choice of using it up to you because there’s a downside: https can make your mail slower since encrypted data doesn’t travel across the web as quickly as unencrypted data. Over the last few months, we’ve been researching the security/latency tradeoff and decided that turning https on for everyone was the right thing to do.”
In related news, Iran’s government has banned Gmail:
As the Iranian authorities attempt to stifle tomorrow’s protests surrounding the anniversary of the Iranian revolution, they are going one step further: Iran is permanently suspending access to Google’s Gmail. Earlier this week, we wrote about failing Internet connections in Iran.
The timing of these problems has been met with suspicion: February 11 (tomorrow) marks the anniversary of the Iranian revolution and gatherings are already being planned to protest against June’s alleged election fraud.
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