Today Google is celebrating the Safer Internet Day and for the second time, it is giving away 2 GB of free Google Drive storage to anyone who performs a security check up on their account. Today, the company is introducing new authentication features to Gmail to help better identify emails that could be harmful.
To begin the security check up, users need to go to the “My account” page and click the “Get Started” button. Users are asked to check their account recovery information and all their Google account connected devices along with the locations where they were used and the browsers they were logged in. If there’s anything suspicious, users have the chance to contact Google. After users finished this task, the 2 GB of extra storage will be added to their Google Drive.
The security check up only takes a couple of minutes and ensures that users are taking a big part in the protection of their accounts, in addition to the one they already get from Google. The company recently announced that one billion active users have passed it.
The company said last year that it would strengthen the security measures and identify emails that arrive over a not encrypted connection. Encryption is important for emails because it lowers the possibility that a message might be hijacked by a third-party. All Gmail-to-Gmail emails are encrypted since Google switched to HTTPS.
Users will receive an alert from Gmail when they are sending an email to a recipient whose account is not encrypted, and the same will happen if the user receives an email from an unencrypted account.
Another important thing for emails to be safe is the authentication of an account. This is a method used to evaluate if an email is a phishing attempt or another kind of malicious attack that steals user’s data or information. The second measure implemented shows a question mark in the sender’s profile picture meaning that Gmail was not able to authenticate it.
“If you receive a message from a big sender (like a financial institution, or a major email provider, like Google, Yahoo or Hotmail) that isn’t authenticated, this message is most likely forged and you should be careful about replying to it or opening any attachments,” Google explained in its Gmail help section.
Source: Tech Crunch