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Posted by Christin on March 31, 2016

Google announced on Thursday that it has expanded it’s Safe Browsing alerts to inform Gmail users of the possibility their Gmail account may have been subject to suspicious government activity. In 2012, Gmail began alerting users if there was a risk of state-sponsored attacks by including the information in a top-page banner. However, users will now see a full-page alert with more detailed information and options to beef up their security if they feel they are, indeed, being targeted. Image: Google Unfortunately, Google admits there is a chance some alerts may be triggered incorrectly or may in fact be false alarms. However, Google is not releasing how these alerts are identifying malicious government-sponsored gmail security intrusions in order to protect their methods for identifying them. Thankfully, Google has estimated that fewer than 0.1% of all Gmail accounts will be subject to these security alerts. Google ads that most of these users seem to be journalists, activists, and policy-makers.