Google enhances Gmail security to keep us safe from spying eyes of the National Security Agency

GOOGLE is taking some dramatic action to ensure Gmail users can sleep safe at night knowing their emails are safe from spying eyes. Find out what.

Google announces how it has enhanced the security of its Gmail service to keep emails saf

GOOGLE has enhanced the encryption technology for its flagship email service in ways that will make it harder for the National Security Agency to intercept messages moving among the company’s worldwide data centres.

Written in the Google Blog it states the company will use an encrypted connection when you check or send email.

“Today’s change means that 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.”

“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 centres — something we made a top priority after last summer’s revelations.”

“Your email is important to you, and making sure it stays safe and always available is important to us,” Nicolas Lidzborski, Gmail’s security engineering lead, wrote.

Among the most extraordinary disclosures in documents leaked by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden were reports that the NSA had secretly tapped into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centres around the world.

Google, whose executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, said in November that he was outraged over the practice, didn’t mention the NSA in Thursday’s announcement, except in a veiled reference to “last summer’s revelations.” The change affects more than 425 million users of Google’s Gmail service.

Google and other technology companies have been outspoken about the U.S. government’s spy programs. The NSA’s principal tool to exploit the Google and Yahoo data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency’s British counterpart, GCHQ. NSA and GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fibre-optic cables that carry information between the data centres of the Silicon Valley giants, the Washington Post reported.

President Barack Obama has promised to consider changing some of the surveillance programs that Snowden disclosed. But the type of surveillance Google is trying to prevent by improving its encryption technology is not among the reforms Obama has discussed.