Email Security Tips For Gmail Users

Using a secure paid email account is usually the best choice one can make but what about Gmail users? One popular myth claims that free email services aren't secure enough while other says the companies behind such services will sell your address to third parties so they can spam you. If you didn't reach out to see the truth just yet I'll try to bring some light into the scene... and also give you a few useful security tips in the process!

First of all you should know that no matter what you're using to work with your email account having a decent password is a must and should always be the first on the email security tips list so we'll start with it...

1. Always use a password you can't easily remember! If your name is John and the password to your email account is the same even my grandmother could easily guess it but if somebody can guess that your password is something like "4r_Z5&a!MJ5" or another meaningless string then I would really like to meet that person!

To remember such passwords the password management features built into Opera or Firefox can get the job done while the task of generating them can be easily accomplished by one of the many password generators available online (my suggestion is to try this one) or your cat messing with the keyboard...

2. Be sure to use secure mode in Gmail! I heard a lot of complaints about Gmail's security and most of them were related to the fact that by default the Web-based client wasn't always using a secure connection. To fix this log on go to Settings and then scroll down to Browser connection in the General tab where you should check "Always use https." Once you do that click on Save changes and that's it!

3. Protect yourselves from eBay- and PayPal-related phishing! Obviously you should open your eyes really wide when receiving emails asking for personal information but if you're using eBay and/or PayPal Gmail just got a brand new feature that can be enabled by going to Settings> Labs and then scrolling to Authentication icon for verified senders where you should check Enable of course. At last choose to save settings and that's it! Once you go through all the above you should get a key icon next to authenticated messages (anyway it's funny to notice that some older messages that I got from eBay didn't get that icon...).

Additional things you should be aware of aren't Gmail-targeted since being careful not to use public computers using a firewall backing up your emails and other similar measures should be on any Internet user's "to do" list.

Do you have any other Gmail security tips? Don't be evil drop a comment below and share your knowledge! ;)