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.

"We initially left the choice of using it up to you because there’s a downside: https can make your mail slower since encrypted data doesn’t travel across the web as quickly as unencrypted data," says Gmail Engineering Director Sam Schillace. "Over the last few months, we’ve been researching the security/latency tradeoff and decided that turning https on for everyone was the right thing to do."

Interesting timing on that decision.

The company is currently rolling out https for all Gmail users, and if you have set your own https preference in Gmail’s settings, nothing will change. Users do still have the option to turn it off. It will just be on by default.

"Gmail will still always encrypt the login page to protect your password," says Schillace. "Google Apps users whose admins have not already defaulted their entire domains to https will have the same option."

Google notes that offline Gmail users using http may experience some hiccups. If this includes you, you may want to read up on this.

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Google continued its public display of affection for privacy and user security with a little update to Gmail. Privacy has been a hot topic for the search advertising company ever since it picked up display ad network DoubleClick, and the massive volume of personal browsing data contained within it.

Every so often Google likes to remind everyone that yes, they really worry as much or more about privacy than you do. They really need go no farther than pointing out the very public fight they conducted with the Bush Administration in Gonzales v Google, when the Justice Department came calling for scads of search data; Google refused, something competing search engines large and small did not do for their customers.

Gmail is Google’s latest topic of privacy adoration, though the change today really just reinforces something always provided with the service. Anyone who wished to use a secure connection to Gmail only needed to type in https:// in front of the Gmail domain in the address bar and click, instant secure traffic.

The clever engineers at Google seized upon the obvious next step, by enabling full-time https connections every time one goes to Gmail. They added an option to Gmail’s settings to always use https for the service.

Logging in to Gmail has always been a secure connection, but once inside the inbox the connection changes to regular http. Speed serves as the consideration here; encryption is not as fast as passing unencrypted traffic.

By enabling the setting within the Gmail account, the user will always have a full https connection no matter which computer he or she may be using at a given time. That should make using PCs at places with open wireless access or public computers a safer prospect.