Kiran Upadhyay

Gmail supports encryption in transit using Transport Layer Security (TLS), and will automatically encrypt your incoming and outgoing emails if it can. Some other email services don't support TLS, and therefore messages exchanged with these services will not be TLS encrypted. In Gmail on your computer, you can check that a message you’ve received was sent over TLS by clicking the small down arrow at the top-left of the email and reading the message details. If you see a red open padlock icon  on a message you’ve received, or on one you're about to send, it means that the message may not be encrypted. If you see the red padlock while composing a message Don’t send confidential material, like tax forms or contracts, to that email address. If you see the red padlock when viewing a received message This message was sent unencrypted. In most cases, there’s nothing you can do. If it contained particularly sensitive content, you should let the sender know and they can cont...

Ah, Gmail. It has become an integral part of our connected lives, ingrained in our daily flow of getting things done. The downside of that is that, like me, you might have missed out on a few new features Gmail has gradually added in the past year. So let’s look at what deserves our attention. We won’t be looking at third-party tools like Sortd, a smart skin to turn Gmail into a Trello-like board. All the features here are built into your Gmail and you don’t need to download or install anything. Emojis! And More Themes! The Internet’s most popular new language is emojis, the spiritual successor to emoticons. Emojis can transcend languages, so it’s only natural that any form of text communication should support them. Google recently announced that it now has added a plethora of new emojis to Gmail. To insert an emoji, just click the “Insert Emoticon” icon in your Compose window and choose what you want. The emojis are still rolling out to all users, so in case you don’t see ...

Google quietly rolled out a new login screen for Gmail this week, and not everyone is happy with the update. Where before, Gmail users would enter their username and password on the same page, the new login flow separates this process. Now, you’ll first enter your username, then be directed to a second page where you enter your password. Some complain that this change slows them down, while others point out that the update has broken their ability to log in using various password managers. According to Google, the change was implemented to prepare for “future authentication systems that complement passwords.” The company is vague on the details as to what those may be, but may be referencing other methods to secure accounts like two-step/two-factor authentication, hardware dongles, or perhaps even some web-based variation of Android’s “Smart Lock” system. That latter item allows Android users to keep their devices unlocked when they have a trusted Bluetooth device connected, a...

Google’s recently released Android 5.0 mobile operating system is currently running on fewer than 0.1 percent of handsets, according to data released by the company. The new software, code-named ‘Lollipop,’ was made generally available November 12. Carriers are currently rolling Lollipop out to consumers, according to their own schedule. The limited uptake of Android’s fifth version so far underscores a wider problem in the mobile world: Fragmentation. It took Windows Phone 8.1, for example, nearly half a year to make it to the 50 percent market share mark. And as Wired notes, Apple is seeing slower adoption of its new iOS 8 than some expected. Current reports indicate that Lollipop is seeing increasing over-the-air updates, which could quickly push its market share numbers higher. Google was not immediately available to comment on the current Lollipop figures. However, even if Lollipop manages to grow its share of the Android install base through the end of the year, it will l...

In the modern workforce, your email often turns into your task list. Trello is a great app to organise your tasks. Well, now you can get the same sort of organisation right in Gmail with a new Chrome extension, Sortd. Sortd is a skin that adds a new layer to your Gmail. Click the small red tab on the side to activate and you’ll be taken to the Sortd view, which is essentially a kanban board—columns where you can add and delete your tasks. How Does Sortd Work? Sortd lists all of your emails in a single pane on the left, with boards taking up space on the right. Here’s what you can do with it: Drag and drop emails to any task board Reorder and rearrange emails with the same drag and drop action Change the subject of emails for clearer understanding Add new items manually to any task board Group emails into a single task Rename lists Add new lists Mark any item as Done, Archived, Dismissed or highlight it with a colour. Click any email and you will be able to view it ...

Use email? Own an Android device? Not a fan of Gmail? There’s good news coming your way. Google is preparing a major update for Gmail for Android that will, among many things, finally handle email accounts from other service providers, such as Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo and AOL [mandatory disclaimer: AOL is, of course, the owner of TechCrunch]. That’s according to the sleuths at Android Police, who discovered evidence of a redesigned app that is expected to launch soon. Update: The Verge also points out that POP, IMAP and Exchange are also supported. You can glimpse a look at the unified Gmail app for Android in the video tour below, which was surfaced by Android Police. The refreshed looking app — which follows Google’s new Material Design language — includes round icons, a clean and bright design and, most notably, said support for third-party email accounts. We expect this update to roll out this week and suspect that this update has been anticipated by loyal Google custo...

Whether your email address is firstname.lastname@ or something more expressive like corgicrazy@, an email address says something about who you are. But from the start, email addresses have always required you to use non-accented Latin characters when signing up. Less than half of the world’s population has a mother tongue that uses the Latin alphabet. And even fewer people use only the letters A-Z. So if your name (or that of your favorite pet) contains accented characters (like “José Ramón”) or is written in another script like Chinese or Devanagari, your email address options are limited.  But all that could change. In 2012, an organization called the  Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)  created a new email  standard  that supports addresses with non-Latin and accented Latin characters (e.g. 武＠メール.グーグル). In order for this standard to become a reality, every email provider and every website that asks you for your email address must adopt it. That’s obvious...

Whether your email address is firstname.lastname@ or something more expressive like corgicrazy@, an email address says something about who you are. But from the start, email addresses have always required you to use non-accented Latin characters when signing up. Less than half of the world’s population has a mother tongue that uses the Latin alphabet. And even fewer people use only the letters A-Z. So if your name (or that of your favorite pet) contains accented characters (like “José Ramón”) or is written in another script like Chinese or Devanagari, your email address options are limited. But all that could change. In 2012, an organization called the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) created a new email standard that supports addresses with non-Latin and accented Latin characters (e.g. ?@???.????). In order for this standard to become a reality, every email provider and every website that asks you for your email address must adopt it. That’s obviously a tough hill to climb. T...

Ever wonder why most e-mail clients hide images by default? The reason for the "display images" button is because images in an e-mail must be loaded from a third-party server. For promotional e-mails and spam, usually this server is operated by the entity that sent the e-mail. So when you load these images, you aren't just receiving an image—you're also sending a ton of data about yourself to the e-mail marketer. Loading images from these promotional e-mails reveals a lot about you. Marketers get a rough idea of your location via your IP address. They can see the  HTTP referrer , meaning the URL of the page that requested the image. With the referral data, marketers can see not only what client you are using (desktop app, Web, mobile, etc.) but also what folder you were viewing the e-mail in. For instance, if you had a Gmail folder named "Ars Technica" and loaded e-mail images, the referral URL would be "https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#label/Ars+T...