How to Secure Gmail with HTTPS (and still use Gmail Notifier)

For all the love I have for my gmail account (I use one gmail account to manage all my other accounts), the one thing I couldn’t get over is that it wasn’t using SSL, which is the main way to secure communications from your browser to the Google servers. If you happen to see “https://…” in the URL of an web page, you’re on a secure page (assuming the site uses proper encryption and certificates).

So when, oh when, will Google finally allow me to use https in the URL???

Finally, you can now use HTTPS (SSL) with Gmail!

How to Secure Your Gmail Account

Google has made securing your account very easy, although it’s buried in the options page:

1. Log into your gmail account
2. Click Settings in the top right
3. In the General tab, scroll down to the bottom of the page
4. In the section labeled Browser Connection, choose Always use https
5. Click Save Changes
6. Log out and log back in to see that you’re now using HTTPS in the URL!

Now the next problem I realized is that my Gmail Notifier couldn’t connect to check email. I knew it was because notifier still wasn’t using SSL, so I did some searching…

How to Secure Your Gmail Notifier Agent

This only applies to Windows users:

1. Download http://www.google.com/mail/help/downloads/notifier_https.zip
2. Open up the folder.
3. Double-click on the file called notifier_https.reg to install it.
4. Click ‘yes’ when you’re asked to confirm if you want to add the information to the registry.
5. Restart the Notifier.

Voila! You can now see the bright blue icon in your toolbar to notify you of your Clever Dude email subscription!

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