New Google Gmail Upgrade For 2 Billion Users — Email Just Got Safer
This Gmail upgrade makes managing your email more secure than ever.
When it comes to email, the free platform that is used more than any other is Gmail by Google. With 2 billion users, sending an estimated 350 billion emails every day, it’s hardly surprising that Gmail is popular among cybercriminals as well as consumers. With everything from a myriad of password attacks, to sophisticated AI-powered phishing scams, Gmail, like all email platforms, is an attack surface that requires your full attention. Google has thankfully just upgraded Gmail with a critical tool to help protect against a gravely underrated threat.
The Gmail Security Upgrade You Didn’t Realize You Needed
Most Google security upgrades are fairly self-explanatory: patches for newly discovered Chrome vulnerabilities, passkeys to replace less secure passwords, sender verification for Google Messages all fall into this category. Some, however, are not and do not. Gmail subscription management fixes a security issue you probably didn’t know you had, but that doesn’t make it any less critical.
The security issue is that of unsubscribing from spam. While Gmail has always done a great job of filtering spam from view, some makes it into your inbox, and some can be rather persistent as it comes in the guise of a legitimate marketing email. However, unsubscribing can be a dangerous affair. How so? Well, unsubscribe links in emails can take you to malicious sites or malicious downloads. This has been a known weapon in the phishing arsenal for years. Gmail has had the perfect defensive protection for some time as well: one-click unsubscribe. The problem is that it wasn’t available to all users. It is now, as Google is going global with the subscription management upgrade for Gmail.
Not only does this bring a handy one-pane-of-glass view to your email subscriptions, sorted by most frequent sender and displaying just how many emails each has sent, but adds an unsubscribe button. Rather than having to visit a potentially dangerous site yourself or risk a potentially malicious download, Gmail handles the unsubscribe request safely on your behalf.
“Alongside our efforts to keep inboxes safe,” Chris Doan, director of Gmail, said, “we’ve also prioritized giving users even more control over the messages they want to receive.” The new manage subscriptions feature has already started to roll out and, Doan said, you can “click on any of the senders for a direct view of all the emails they’ve sent.” Once available to you, you’ll find it in the navigation bar in the top-left corner of your inbox.