• by Jess Nelson , February 10, 2016

Google commemorated "Safer Internet Day" Tuesday by updating Gmail to warn users when they send or receive emails over unsecured connections.

Safer Internet Day (SID) is an annual February event organized by Insafe, a European network of professionals and organizations that promote the responsible and safe use of online technology and mobile devices to children and young adults.

Founded in 2004 as an initiative by the EU SafeBorders project, SID raises awareness of emerging online issues such as cyber bullying. Over half of adolescents and teens have been bullied online, and about the same number have engaged in cyber bullying, according to the i-SAFE foundation.

Google embraced this year’s SID theme, “Play your part for a better Internet,” by adding extra security measures to Gmail. Any email messages that Gmail users send or receive and that don’t support TLS encryption will now be flagged by Google with an icon of a padlock. The padlock also reveals a dialog box warning users that their message might contain confidential information, and that they might want to consider using a different email provider.

In addition, Google will also flag email contacts with unverifiable identities. In an extension to Google’s expansive DMARC policies, Google’s new security policies help Gmail users identify potentially malicious email messages with stricter authentication features.

Encryption is an essential security measure in email because it lowers the risk that the email might be hacked by a third party.

“Of course, it takes at least two people to send and receive an email, so it’s really important that other services take similar measures to protect your messages -- not just Gmail,” writes John Rae-Grant, Product Manager at Gmail, in a blog post online.

Google is also offering 2 gigabytes of free Google Drive storage space for users who complete a security audit of their account. Consumers have until February 11 to take advantage of the free storage space offer.