Security obsessives will know that although Google has begun encrypting the links between its own servers — so the National Security Agency can’t hack our e-mails as they’re traveling across the company’s systems — we risk losing those protections as soon as our messages leave Google’s walled garden.The trouble is that encryption only works if both your e-mail program and your recipient’s support it. So if, for example, you’re on Gmail, but your friend uses a Comcast.net e-mail address, chances are your messages will show up unencrypted at the other end, because Comcast doesn’t have encryption enabled. (Update: Comcast tells me that it is currently testing encryption and will soon be able to talk to Google servers on an encrypted basis “in a matter of weeks.”) Google estimates that up to half of the e-mail sent between Gmail and other sites are not encrypted — a situation that could be easily fixed with the right investments, according to a Google employee who declined to be named because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/06/03/google-will-now-name-and-shame-e-mail-providers-that-dont-support-encryption/