As news of Google’s China situation dominates headlines, the company has also announced that it is turning on https access for Gmail as the default (Gmail accounts were hacked in China, in case you haven’t read about that yet).

Https, which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure is used to provide encryption and secure ID. Back in 2008 Google started giving users the option to use it.

With apologies to Alec Baldwin and his epic dialogue in Glengarry Glen Ross, Google promises to always be covering connections to Gmail with encryption, or not, at a user’s discretion.