It’s something that has happened to all of us: you finish an email, hit send, and suddenly realize that you’ve made a typo or spelled the recipient’s name wrong. Or you were much too angry when you wrote it. For Gmail users there has been a quiet and until-now-unadvertised fix for this, known as the “Undo Send” feature.
The feature does exactly what its name implies: it lets you un-send an email for a short while after sending. Of course, it isn’t reaching out and snatching the email back — it just holds the email for a brief period sufficient for you to evaluate your regrets — but it can still be a life-saver. This feature has actually been available since March of 2009, but it has been hidden away in the Labs section of Gmail’s settings.
Now the feature is finally making its way out of the Labs dungeon. Undo Send will soon be added as a “formal setting” for the web version of Gmail, Google announced today in a post on the Google App Updates blog.
The Gmail web app isn’t the only place this feature can be found. Google Inbox, released last year, has had its own “Undo Send” feature since its launch. Plenty of third-party mail apps offer this feature as well, but for those who use the vanilla Gmail web client, it’s nice to see that the feature is now officially supported.
If you haven’t been using the beta version of the feature, it will remain turned off by default. To turn it on simply head to the General tab in Gmail’s settings and tick the “Enable Undo Send” checkbox. You’ll also be able to set how long Gmail will hold a message before actually sending it. If you’ve already been using the Labs version of the feature, it will remain turned on by default.
The feature began rolling out yesterday, so it should be available to most people already, though it’s possible that it could take up to two weeks to show up for some people.
Google Inbox is a free mobile app and Web service that may one day replace today's Gmail.Google
If you've been feeling overwhelmed by a mountain of email in Gmail, you may be glad to know that Google wants to help. But there's a twist: the help will come from Inbox, a free email app now available by invitation that promises to better organize messages.
Developed by the Gmail team, Inbox is intended to coexist with Google's flagship email product, not replace it. For example, it groups similar types of messages, and automatically highlights key information such as flight itineraries and event information. It comes as competitors, including Apple and file-sharing company Dropbox, have released or updated products aimed at making it easier to find online needles in a haystack.
A key Inbox feature called Assists will integrate real-time updates from the Web directly into email. An emailed flight itinerary will highlight the original itinerary but also show real-time status updates on your flights.
Other Inbox features are new twists on options that will sound familiar to Gmail users. The Bundles option automatically will group similar messages, such as receipts, and allow you to swipe them all away at once. You can also create custom message bundles.
Important factual details of a message -- think phone numbers, flight status, images and attachments -- will be available without having to open the message, much the way that you can see an email's subject line now without having to read the email itself.
Inbox also integrates Google Now reminders and lets you create your own reminders. You can snooze messages and set them to show up later, at a specific time or when you're in a specific location.
The app is available on smartphones running Google's Android operating system or Apple's iOS, and on the Web -- but only in Google's Chrome browser for now. While Google is sending out a limited number of invitations to try Inbox, curious Gmail users can request an invite through inbox@google.com.
It’s good news/bad news time. The bad news is that someone got his or her hands on nearly 5 million Gmail addresses and corresponding passwords and made them all public. The good news is that even if your Gmail address is on the list, the password may be too old to merit much concern.
The Russian tech blog Habrahabr theorizes that the leaked Gmail addresses and passwords were most likely compiled through phishing scams, use of weak passwords and other common compromises, not as a result of a hacked Google server. Similar databases of email addresses and passwords from Yandex and Mail.ru, two popular Russian-language services, were made public earlier this week.
You can use a site called, appropriately enough, “Is my email leaked?” if you’d like to check the status of your Gmail, Yandex, or Mail.ru account. The site itself is safe, and you can even give a shortened version of your email address with asterisks if you’re concerned.
Earlier today (Sept. 10), Australian security researcher Troy Hunt tweeted that he’d soon be adding the Gmail addresses to his own haveibeenpwned.com compromised-email checking website, which aggregates the results of large password dumps.
Based on an informal poll of the Tom’s Guide New York office, not that many people seem to be affected by this data dump. This makes sense when you consider that Gmail has more than 500 million users and the password breach affects fewer than 1 percent of them.
Even if you’re one of the 5 million affected, you may not have to worry. Many of the passwords on the list are outdated, tweeted Peter Kruse of Danish security firm CSIS — some by as long as three years. If you change your password on even a semi-regular basis (as Gmail recommends), cybercriminals most likely have no way to access your account or personal information.
If your account has been compromised (or even if it hasn’t, and you want to be safe), change your Gmail password to something totally different, and consider adding two-step verification to your account. Otherwise, just remember that password breaches are relatively common but also tend to get overblown in mainstream-media coverage.
Scientists have developed a novel method that allowed them to successfully hack into Gmail with up to 92% accuracy.
WASHINGTON: Scientists have developed a novel method that allowed them to successfully hack into Gmail with up to 92% accuracy.
A team of researchers, including an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering, have identified a weakness believed to exist in Android, Windows and iOS mobile operating systems that could be used to obtain personal information from unsuspecting users. They demonstrated the hack on an Android phone.
The researchers tested the method and found it was successful between 82% and 92% of the time on six of the seven popular apps they tested.
Among the apps they easily hacked were Gmail, Chase Bank and H&R Block. Amazon, with a 48% success rate, was the only app they tested that was difficult to penetrate.
The researchers believe their method will work on other operating systems because they share a key feature researchers exploited in the Android system. The researchers believed there was a security risk with so many apps being created by so many developers. Once a user downloads a bunch of apps to their smartphone they are all running on the same shared infrastructure, or operating system.
"The assumption has always been that these apps can't interfere with each other easily," Zhiyun Qian, of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at UC Riverside said.
"We show that assumption is not correct and one app can in fact significantly impact another and result in harmful consequences for the user," said Qian.
The attack works by getting a user to download a seemingly benign, but actually malicious, app, such as one for background wallpaper on a phone.
Once that app is installed, the researchers are able to exploit a newly discovered public side channel — the shared memory statistics of a process, which can be accessed without any privileges.
The researchers monitor changes in shared memory and are able to correlate changes to what they call an "activity transition event," which includes such things as a user logging into Gmail or taking a picture of a check so it can be deposited online.
Augmented with a few other side channels, the authors show that it is possible to fairly accurately track in real time which activity a victim app is in.
There are two keys to the attack. One, the attack needs to take place at the exact moment the user is logging into the app or taking the picture.
Two, the attack needs to be done in an inconspicuous way. The researchers did this by carefully calculating the attack timing.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on a visit to Russia.Facebook
Russia's parliament has passed legislation that could see Western technology firms barred from operating if they fail to store Russian data within the country.
The legislation would require tech giants, such as Facebook, Google's Gmail, and Microsoft-owned Skype, to put Russian customer data on Russian soil in order to allow authorities to legally acquire and inspect data at will.
Currently, Russian authorities have no powers to acquire data outside its borders, unless they submit a lawful mutual legal assistance request, which can be denied by another nation.
The "Information, Information Technologies and Protection of Information" amendment, part of the country's anti-terrorism laws, would require Russian data to be stored within the country in order to be accessed by state security and intelligence services.
Should domestic Russian or foreign email, social networking, and instant messaging providers fail to provide access to six months' worth of data, they face being barred from operating in the country altogether.
The Russian Duma, the country's lower house, moved to adopt the legislation as of Tuesday following a successful third reading of the bill.
The legislation -- which has yet to be approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin -- would force foreign companies to install servers and data centers inside Russia in order to be compliant. It would give the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB, formerly KGB) and other media and "mass communication" regulators greater control over the Russian Internet and could see sites removed from the country's Internet register.
That would mean Internet providers on Russian soil could be forced to block access to sites and services, preventing them from being accessible to the general public.
It comes just two weeks after the European Union's highest court overturned similar, controversial data-retention laws, which had forced Internet providers to store data for up to two years for law enforcement and intelligence purposes.
As a non-European Union member, Russia recognizes some Brussels-born legislation in order to maintain relations with the 28-member state bloc, but actively rejects others -- not least in its anti-terrorism and data collection legislation.
Bloggers, citizen activists affected
The legislation (translated) states that any site operating in the country does "not allow... for the dissemination of materials... publicly justifying terrorism and other extremist materials, and materials that promote pornography, violence and cruelty, and materials containing obscene language."
It comes less than two years after the Russian government implemented an Internet blacklist law under the guise of anti-pornography and extremist sites rhetoric, which allows the Russian authorities to censor sites that would hamper political opponents of the ruling administration.
The Kremlin-supported bill, which passed in July 2012, forced any website falling foul of its strict anti-"extremist" law to remove content or face being adding to the blacklist within 24 hours.
The "blacklist" law came at a time during the Pussy Riot furor, which landed the four members of the Russian punk band in prison for two years after they allegedly broke hooliganism laws, a criminal offense under the country's judicial system.
The band's videos, uploaded to YouTube and other sites, were blocked from access within the country following a Russian court's decision to classify the content as "extremist" material under the blacklist law.
Yandex, a Russia-based Internet provider, said in a statement (translated): "In our opinion, the adoption of the law will be another step towards the strengthening of state control over the Internet in Russia, which has a negative impact on the development industry."
The legislation can also be applied to bloggers, citizen journalists, and activists, according to the bill's text, which would also force them to "place on their website... their name and initials, the email address for sending him a legally meaningful message."
Increasing isolation
The Putin and Medvedev tag-team administration has since 2012 ramped up its Internet monitoring and censorship activities as it faces increased pressure from Western governments over claims of internal power struggles and political corruption -- not least from opposition political groups that claim they are being oppressed by the federal government.
Russia, with a population of more than 145 million, continues to face increasing isolation from the G8 group of countries over its annexation of Crimea after the former Ukrainian president fled the country amid an uprising earlier this year. The annexation, decried as an unconstitutional move by the Ukrainian government, led the peninsula to become de-facto Russian territory, but has not been legally recognized by the US or European authorities.
Russia's recent legislature has led privacy experts to warn of the restriction of freedom of speech, information, and politics of opposition members critical of the Kremlin and Putin regime.
In the past week alone, Pavel Durov, founder of Russia's largest social network, VK.com, which has more than 100 million users, claimed he was fired, according to BBC News. He alleges that allies of Putin took over the site after he refused requests from the Russian government to censor posts on his site.
Durov has since fled Russia and says he has no plans to return. "[Russia] is now incompatible with Internet business at the moment," he told TechCrunch in an interview on Wednesday.
Russia's lower parliament has also banned swearing in films, plays, concerts and shows, BBC News reports.
Google updated its terms of service this week to clarify the manner in which software automatically scans and analyzes the content of your emails so the company can deliver what it calls "tailored advertising," in addition to ferreting out spam and malware. When you signed up for your Gmail account, you consented to such things.
If you've been using Gmail for any length of time, however, then you've likely learned to ignore the ads it displays above, below, to the side, or directly inside your inbox. Perhaps with Google's terms of service in the news this week, you've given new thought to the ads you see in Gmail. There is no way to stop some of the ads from appearing, but if you dig around in settings, you can opt out of targeted ads. And you can eliminate one ad that sits at the top of every message you read when using accessing Gmail via a desktop or laptop.
Perhaps you don't like the targeted ads because they are a constant reminder of Google's ever-vigilant scanning of your personal correspondence. Or perhaps you just find targeted ads harder to ignore than ads that aren't tailored to you and your interests. Whatever your reason, you can opt out of what Google refers to as "interest-based ads" and receive contextual ads that may be based on the message you are currently reading but not on the content of your inbox on the whole as well as your Google search history and other account information.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
To opt out, head to Google's Ad Settings page. Scroll down to the "Opt-out settings" area and click the "Opt out" link for "Opt out of interest-based ads on Google."
Next, let's get rid of the narrow banner text ad that sits above every Gmail message you open. You've probably blocked it out, but there is an easy way to eliminate it altogether. Click on the gear icon in the upper-right corner and choose Settings. Then click on the Web Clips tab and uncheck the box for "Show my web clips above the Inbox."
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
Now, as the informative post on WonderHowTo explains, you can also remove any ads that appear as messages in the Promotions tab of your Gmail inbox, but to do so, you have to delete the Promotions tab. In my case, I don't see such ads in my Promotion tab, and deleting it would unleash a wave of messages to my primary inbox that I'd rather keep quarantined in the Promotions tab. If you'd like to get rid of the Promotions tab, go to the Inbox tab in settings and you'll be able to uncheck a box for the Promotions tab.
Alternatively, Chrome users can use the Gmelius extension, which lets you customize what elements show up on Gmail and where.
Google Inc updated its terms of service on Monday, informing users that their incoming and outgoing emails are automatically analyzed by software to create targeted ads.
The revisions more explicitly spell out the manner in which Google software scans users' emails, both when messages are stored on Google's servers and when they are in transit, a controversial practice that has been at the heart of litigation.
Last month, a U.S. judge decided not to combine several lawsuits that accused Google of violating the privacy rights of hundreds of millions of email users into a single class action.
Users of Google's Gmail email service have accused the company of violating federal and state privacy and wiretapping laws by scanning their messages so it could compile secret profiles and target advertising. Google has argued that users implicitly consented to its activity, recognizing it as part of the email delivery process.
Google spokesman Matt Kallman said in a statement that the changes "will give people even greater clarity and are based on feedback we've received over the last few months."
Google's updated terms of service added a paragraph stating that "our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.
"The team has been working hard to mitigate any performance costs, which now puts us in a position where it no longer makes sense to allow HTTP connections," a Google spokesperson told CNET. "The large majority of users already use HTTPS connections, so this is the final step in the journey."This follows a 2010 decision to make HTTPS the default for Gmail communications, but up until today Google had given users the ability to not use encryption. Four years ago, the company explained the opt-out as necessary because encryption could "make your mail slower."
Google notes that Gmail messages are encrypted internally, as they move about Google's servers and data centers, a measure implemented in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks.
The company also boasted about Gmail's stability, with service available 99.978 percent of the time.
Google Mail (Gmail) was down today for a while. Accessing the service threw up a 502 error:"The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request. Please try again in 30 seconds"
Google stated on its Apps Status Dashboard that there was an issue with Postini services, which caused the disruption. "Our network operations team identified a 3rd party issue that was affecting System 200 inbound and outbound mail. Customers were experiencing 421 errors that resulted in deferrals," Google wrote. Postini is an e-mail and Web security and archiving service that provides cloud computing services for filtering e-mail spam and malware (before it is delivered to a client's mail server), offers optional e-mail archiving, and protects client networks from web-borne malware.
The error as visible on the Google Apps Status Dashboard
However, Google quickly resolved the problem and Gmail is back up now. The last post on the Apps Status Dashboard reads, "The problem with Postini Services should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better. "
Only five days ago, both Gmail and Google Chat went down for nearly an hour. The disruption came to light when many Twitter users complained of the service being inaccessible. Interestingly, the downtime was only experienced in the web interface of Gmail, with both the mail and chat service working perfectly on our mobile phones.
The error message
Twitter is abuzz with irate/sarcastic users venting their frustration. One user with the handle @JediByKnight has tweeted,"Gmail is down! Gmail is down! *runs around in panic*", while another user with the handle @jub_in tweeted, "Gmail is down. Gmail is down. 502. People start writing articles on what this could mean for humanity!"
