On 9 February 2016, Gmail announced it would warn users when they receive e-mail that was not encrypted by the sender. After all, e-mail often includes personnal information, but has historically never been encrypted. A webmail might use https, an IMAP account is usually using encryption as well, but users do not have an easy way to know if the communication between two e-mail servers is encrypted. Gmail therefore introduced a small red open padlock in the e-mail header to warn users if the communication was not encrypted.
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