Industry guru Dave Taylor offers free tech support on a wide variety of technical and business topics, including HTML, online advertising, Cascading Style Sheets, Web design, management, Unix, Linux, search engine optimization, online dating, Mac OS X, shell script programming and Microsoft Windows.

Is there a way to force Google Gmail to use SSL security?

After two of my friends had information stolen from them through public wireless networks, I'm completely paranoid. Is there some way to connect to Google's Gmail service securely?

Dave's Answer:

A long time ago I figured out that if you logged into Gmail, then if you weren't given a secure URL (that is, one that started with https:// that you could just go ahead and manually add the 's' and it'd stay secure from that point on. Then if you bookmarked the SSL connection, you'd be golden.

I've used that trick for years with my Gmail accounts (and documented it here too: How to get a secure connection to Gmail).

The problem is, it's kind of a hack.

Fortunately, Google just recently added a new setting in Gmail that lets you force it to always be secure rather than just hoping it'll stay SSL once you force it there.

To find the new setting, simply log in to your Gmail account and click on Settings. Scroll down a bit and you'll see:

Click on "always use https", then click "Save Changes" and you're good forever.

Thanks for this one, Google!

Help others find this article at Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Stumble Upon

Categorized: Computer and Internet Basics (Article 8409)
Tagged: gmail, google mail, identity theft, mail security, privacy, webmail
Previous: What is a "tentpole movie"?
Next: What is alluvial gold dust?

Subscribe!

Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader.

Comments

Very nice. I've never noticed this before. I used to just add the s at the end of http when im logging in at school :)

Posted by: Chris at September 6, 2008 4:20 PM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!