One of these changes has been particularly controversial, as it broadens the list of contacts available to Gmail users so it includes both the email addresses of their existing contacts, as well as the names of people on the Google+ social network.
This might result in some users receiving messages from people with whom they have not shared their email addresses, as Gmail users can now send messages to both known contacts and complete strangers on Google+.
Increase the privacy of your Gmail account
Do you want to have control over who can or cannot send emails to your Gmail account? Here we tell you how to do it:
In your inbox, click the ‘wheel’ icon. This will take you to the Settings section.
In the Settings section, select who can email you from their Google+ profile. You can choose to receive messages only from people you have added to your circles, or from no one at all.
Another new change is the fact that images attached to messages are now displayed automatically without you having to choose to display them.
According to Google, the reason for this is that “Instead of serving images directly from their original external host servers, Gmail will now serve all images through Google’s own secure proxy servers.” This will improve the security of received messages, and provide users with better protection as Gmail will check all images for viruses and malware.
What do you think of these changes? Will you change your Gmail privacy settings?