Google adds enhanced safety feature to Gmail

As a part of the Safer Internet Day 2016, Google has tightened the security for its Gmail service. The search giant will now flag those email providers that don't support Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption, which is aimed at ensuring a connection is secure before exchanging data between server and client.

Emails sent using such mail services will be flagged with a red broken lock icon on the top-right corner of the mail.

Clicking on the icon will show users a dialogue box with a message stating that if the mail which a user is sending includes some "confidential information". They might want to advise the receiver to use a different email provider that supports TLS encryption.

In addition, Gmail will flag emails received from contacts whose identity cannot be verified. The service will alert the receiver about the emails coming from unauthenticated sources by showing a question mark in place of the contact's profile photo.

"Not all affected email will necessarily be dangerous. But we encourage you to be extra careful about replying to, or clicking on links in messages that you're not sure about. And with these updates, you'll have the tools to make these kinds of decisions," states John Rae-Grant, product manager at Google.

Gmail recently hit the one billion active users milestone. The news was announced by Google chief executive Sundar Pichai at Alphabet's earning call. Gmail had 900 million active users as of May 2015.