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Users can now select to have their messages sent over a secure socket layer connection (HTTPS) by default, in a bid to prevent messages being intercepted on open Wi-Fi connections or in a net café.

Previously, Gmail users had to manually enter the https://www.gmail.com address rather than the standard http://www.gmail.com address to

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turn the encryption on.

"If you want to always use https, then this setting makes it super easy," Gmail's magnificently-named engineer, Ariel Rideout, writes on the Google blog. "Whenever you forget to type https://mail.google.com, we'll add the https for you. If you already have the https URL bookmarked, using this setting will ensure you access your account via https even when you don't use your bookmark."

Rideout admits that using the https encryption will slow the performance of Gmail. "Your computer has to do extra work to decrypt all that data, and encrypted data doesn't travel across the internet as efficiently as unencrypted data," she says. "That's why we leave the choice up to you."

The encryption function is currently being rolled out across the service, and will be found in the Gmail settings menu.