Google Data Shows That Around 50% Of Email Exchanges Aren't Encrypted

Google announced today that it has added a "Safer Email" section to its Transparency report. This section will help keep track of the percentage of incoming and outgoing email that's encrypted - or not encrypted.

Encryption is a common process of encoding messages so that they can't be read by anyone but you, or whomever you decide to share it with.

In the past 30 days, for example, 65% of all outgoing messages were encrypted; 50% of incoming messages from other services to Gmail were encrypted.

The key to email encryption is that both sides of the email exchange need to support it. Just because Google does, doesn't mean your email is automatically safe.

"Many providers have turned on encryption, and others have said they're going to, which is great news," wrote Gmail Delivery Team tech lead Brandon Long in a blog post announcing the update to the report.

The report also shows the top domains that are sending and receiving email to and from Gmail, and their respective encryption rates. If you're a Yahoo email user, rest assured that fewer than 1 in 100 emails a Yahoo account sends to Gmail is unencrypted. The same can't be said for Comcast.net, unfortunately.

This news coincides with Google's effort to make encryption easier for people to implement. The company just released the code for a new tool that encrypts your emails until your intended recipient decrypts the message in his or her browser. The new Chrome extension, called End-To-End, is currently in testing. By releasing the code, developers can offer Google feedback.