Best 5 Google Apps to Better Run Your Household

While GSuite previously known as Google apps is a blessing when it comes to office work, what many don’t know is that it can be used at home too. With all the Google apps being in one place and often integrated, GSuite / Google apps seems to work at office and at home too. Imagine if you’re a parent and have a full time job too, keeping tabs of both your work life as well as your child’s life can be a really daunting task so why not get Google apps to help you along the way?

Using Google Calendar on Google apps to help keep track of your child’s events:

Keep track of your child’s school events and appointments with Google calendar on Google apps. You can add multiple calendars for each child and put all those child’s event into one place whether it be soccer practice or a friend’s birthday party.

You can even put different colors for different children to avoid any misplacement of schedules. You can also toggle off or on each calendar if you just need to see your own schedule.

With the Google app you can also share the calendar with others, like your child’s calendar with a spouse or a care giver without the need to send your events too.

All you need to do is select the three dots near the person’s calendar option and press “settings and share”. Even when you add a new event to the calendar, Google calendar updates the calendar which has been shared without the need for you to contact that person.

Get in touch with Gmail’s multiple tabs and snooze feature on Google apps:

Gmail on Google apps has a feature whereby you can separate emails by the types of sender like for example social media emails can go in a separate tab. What this feature does is allow you to keep your mail clean and concentrate only on the things that matter without getting too overwhelmed by a lot of emails.

You can access this feature form the Settings icon on Gmail and press “configure inbox”.

The Snooze feature is an excellent way to not only declutter your inbox but to also keep track of events as and when they occur. For example keeping the confirmation for your child’s school trip for a week before the trip. This also helps you keep track of what needs to happen and when.

Google hangouts on Google apps to stay in touch:

Google hangouts as a part of Google apps, is a cool way to stay in touch with loved ones at work too. You can access Google Hangouts from your desktop and Gmail and switch between answering emails to keeping in touch with your child. You could even check if you’ve missed some notification from the family too.

Using Google maps From Google apps to travel:

You can use Google maps to reduce the time you take to reach from one place to another. Besides giving you updates on traffic on your route you can even check out if there is a shortcut to the route you’ve been taking for years. This will help you keep your schedules while getting a few minutes rest too.

Google Advance Protection, for Those Who Need It Most

Google Advance protection: Secured Login Procedure

A much more secured login procedure for users who tend to be at high risk of online attacks has been designed by Google wherein the latest Google Advance protection feature is directed on defence against phishing, fraudulent access and accidental sharing of accounts.

This feature has been hosted for users keeping in mind journalist who would require safeguarding their sources or campaign staffers at the time of election. Google Advance protection program would be utilising Security Keys that tend to be small USB or wireless devices which would be essential in signing into accounts. According to Google they seem to be the most secured type of two-step verification, utilising public key cryptography together with digital signatures for confirmation on the identity of the user.

Google has stated that the security keys could be complex and could be utilised for users who do not mind taking them around, utilising the Chrome browsers on desktop and Google apps, since the keys would not function with the mail, calendar together with the contact apps of iPhone. Alphabets’ Google had mentioned that it would be rolling out this program to offer stronger mail security for users like government officials, political activists besides journalists who may be the object by refined hackers.

Google Advance protection with Physical USB Security Keys

Google users would have the advantage of choosing in to security settings focused on protecting Gmail, YouTube data and Google Drive from phishing attacks.Google Advance protection features comprises of physical USB security keys for connecting to a desktop computer before every login for the purpose of identifying the user.

Mobile logins would need a Bluetooth wireless device. Google Advance protection users would have their data confined from access by any of the non-Google third-party applications like the Apple iOS mail client aapl or Microsoft Outlook msft. The program is said to comprise of a much more laborious as well as detailed account recovery procedure in order to avert fraudulent access by the hackers who may tend to obtain access by playing that they have been locked out.

Users, who tend to be part of Google Advance protection, would have extra steps put in order, at the time of account recovery comprising of extra reviews together with request on why a user seemed to have lost access to their account. Moreover Google Advance protection feature tends to automatically restrict full access to Gmail as Google Drive for particular apps.

Google Advance protection: Upgrade Two-Factor Authentication Tool

As of now, Google Advance protection would be made available for consumers of Google Accounts and in order to offer comparable protection on G Suite Accounts, G suite admins would look into Security Key Enforcement together with OAuth apps whitelisting.

Earlier this year, Google had mentioned that it intends to upgrade its two-factor authentication tool after numerous high-profile hacks inclusive of the Gmail account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta in 2016. U.S. Intelligence agencies believed that those hacks comprising of a breach of John Podesta’s personal Gmail account had been done by Russian as part of a broader cyber campaign to assist Donald Trump, to win the White House.

Google has stated that it would update the security of accounts on a continuous basis which has been signed up for the program and the same is made available to users having a regular account. While Google had earlier supported the utilisation of security keys for two-factor authentication, Google Advance protection users would not be having backup log-in system available should they lose their keys other than the fuller account recovery procedure. Google has not specified what the recovery practice would involve.

Google Will Let Gmail Users Receive 50 Megabyte Attachments

File sharing is a breeze for the users but sharing large files is still a headache for most of the users. A number of cloud sharing services has emerged in the recent past like the Microsoft One Drive, Google Drive and Dropbox which allows us to share large files with other across the globe with ease. But when someone tries to send a large file through email and most importantly through Gmail then get to a roadblock. However Google has finally decided to do something about this problem by increasing the cap on the email attachment size.

Rom this week onwards Google will users to send up to 50 MB files in the emails. Google had also released a statement wherein it stated that Google Drive will remain the penultimate mode of sharing large for its users but in order to fulfill the need of sending large files even on the mail they had decided to bump up the size allotted for email attachments. Now the entire Gmail user will get a chance to receive up to 50 MB directly to their email account with no frills attached.

Gmail Malware attack report

Quite recently Google has brought a malware report which essentially offers a breakdown of the Gmail users receiving spam content. This report has revealed that the users from the real estate sector happen to be the prime target of the emails filled with malicious content and links.

Google has failed to explain why most of the businesses from the real estate background have been the target of the spammers. But the Boston division of the FBI has also released a similar warning in the month of December where it stated that surge has been seen in the business email compromise emerging in the real estate sector. The frequent targets were the real estate agents for the fraudsters and the spammers.

Google report also revealed that the science related firms from the EU region and more specifically Germany has received 9.6 times higher number of phishing emails against US counterparts. The numbers shown in the report reveals that spammers have generally targeted the firms in the entertainment, IT and housing sectors.

Google decision of increasing the cap on the email attachment for Gmail will not just help the users but it will also make it easier to send large files with malicious content.

There is a hitch

Google doesn’t want its users to go on the spree of sending large files on the email therefore it has not done away with the existing 25 MB cap on its outgoing messages in the Gmail. Gmail or Google users can always make use of the Google Drive to share large files with others but the new size limit will come to all the G Suite editions in upcoming three days which will help Gmail users in receiving oversized files like the spreadsheets, videos or any kind of attachments from other email providers.

Gmail phishing: Latest Cyber Attack

Email phishing isn’t going to be dead anytime soon. Scammer, cyber attackers and hackers are getting smarter with each passing day and they are evolving new ways of convincing people that their mails are true. A new kind of sophisticated phishing technique has been in vogue wherein hackers compose highly convincing emails for the target users. In this technique past messages and attachments of the target users are analyzed before composing such mails which breathes of originality and normality and urges users to click to divulge their critical information.

The Gmail-phishing trend

This particular trend of phishing has been uncovered by Mark Mauder, the CEO of WordPress’s security plugin is called Wordfence. In this particular kind of evolved phishing attack hacker first sends across an email which appears to the user as a normal mail containing a PDF which possess a similar file name as seen earlier by the user.

Another gruesome thing about this PDF is that it carefully contains a disguised image which when clicked by the users launches a new tab will appears just like official Gmail log-in page. In is extremely tough for a normal users to find the minute details which reveals it isn’t the real Gmail sign in page. This can only be found by closing looking at the address bar revealing a script running right there.

So real, so convincing

As stated earlier it is extremely difficult for anyone to find flaws in the webpage design which results in targeted user entering their log-in details without any second thought. Once a user has entered the details then it can be used by the hackers to gain access to account for stealing the data or simply forward one mail to other recipients from the very same mail. In one such incident hackers has successfully hoodwinked an athlete believing their mail and link to be the true Gmail sign-up page.

Thereby they used his accounts log-in details to similar mails to other athletes in the team and within a short whole team’s emails and data were compromised. Hackers don’t waste much time after getting the log-in details. They use target users email account to send out multiple mails with user’s actual subject lines to other people in the contact list.

How to protect yourself from such phishing attack

There are some smart ways to outwit the hackers and stay safe from such attacks. One should always check upon the address of opening links when clicked on any kind of email. In this case the legitimate Gmail page has ‘https://’ address while the phishing attacks links possess ‘data:text/html.https://’. This clearly shows the given link brings the fake url of the Gmail’s sign-up page and it is also too long in nature. The best way to secure your Gmail account is to enable the two form authorization on Gmail wherein users has to insert not just their id and password but they also have to enter a passcode sent to their mobile device to enter their email account.

Gmail Will now Warn You if You’re Being Targeted by the Government

Gmail Security Warning

Apple is not the only company that has been combating against government backed cyber-attacks. While Apple and the FBI dispute over the security of the user, Google has been bringing security in focus in a different way, by telling you what is going on. The company would be increasing the perceptibility of Gmail security warning in an attempt to help people in protecting themselves while sending and receiving emails.

One of the changes seems to be the expansion of the `safe browsing’ notifications that tells the user when they are about to open a suspicious link from an email. The warnings could appear when a link has been clicked but before the link really opens, it presents the user with a last option to withdraw instead of visiting the page. Earlier a warning was only shown before a link was clicked though no block seemed to appear if the user had not seen the warning or clicked it.

Google expects that this new additional warning would be helpful in stopping users from visiting malicious sites. Google also tends to continue the fight against state-sponsored attacks, portraying a full page warning when one is being targeted by a government-backed hacker.

Gmail Accounts Targeted by Government-backed Attackers

In a blog post, Google had mentioned that less than 0.1% of Gmail users would be receiving this kind of warning, but it highlights the importance of the warnings due to the fact that those often receiving them seem to be journalist, policy-makers and activists.

 The new warning of the state-sponsored attacks could be portrayed in addition to or instead of current warnings which Google tends to have in place for state-sponsored attacks. Google has been complaining of Gmail security a bit recently and last month had made an announcement that it would be warning users who seem to send email to recipients who were not utilising TLS encryption.

As per Google, after adding this message, the number of emails that were sent over encrypted connections had increased by around 25%. In an update in the manner that Gmail intends to be more secure, Google revealed that around 1 million Gmail accounts could have been targeted by government-backed attackers so far.

Striving to Improve Safe Browsing/Enhance Email Encryption

Google did not disclosethe precise number and did not provide any explanation on how it knows when these hacks tend to take place. When a hack is identified, a pink Warning tab tends to appear on top of Gmail prompting affected users to protect themselves.

 The company also made an announcement recently that besides the bar, users would also get the full page warning with instructions on how to stay safe. This is what will be seen if a government is trying to hack into a Gmail account. Google, in its security update, mentioned that is striving to improve its Safe Browsing warnings which appear in Gmail each time a user clicks on what is believed to be a shady link which could lead to malware or phishing attacks.

Google intends to further enhance email encryption and the company has partnered with Comcast, Microsoft and Yahoo in submitting a draft IETF specification for `SMTP Strict Transport Security’, and Google together with its partners desire to ensure that encrypted email remains encrypted all along the complete path from sender to recipient.

Gmail be Replaced By Inbox Smart Email Tool As Main Google Email System

Gmail Rolled out New Tabbed Interface for Inbox on Mobile/Desktop

Gmail has rolled out a new tabbed interface for inbox on mobile as well as desktop. On first glance it seems good for email organization but on further inspection, these latest tabs seem to be confusing. According to the official Gmail blog, one can select which categories can be enabled as tabs that will show you how many new emails one may have for each category offering another option in organizing the inbox.

One can drag and drop messages between tabs and set certain senders to appear always on certain tabs. This feature is rolling on the desktop gradually and will soon be coming to Android as well as iOS apps shortly.

The tabs will slide in from the side in the case of mobile. Google has added the unsubscribed button to Android version of Gmail also and the feature that had been offered on the web enables users to get rid of newsletter together with other subscriptions which the users do not read or could have never intentionally signed up. Both the options are available in the same dropdown menu which is utilised in the selection of `Reply’ or `Forward’ options. Updates of the web are available already and the Android ones would be available very soon.

Beginning of the End for Gmail

Users have been encouraged to utilise its `Inbox by Gmail’ service by the company, in the intention which some have stated could be the `beginning of the end’, for Gmail. Inbox had been introduced last year, though Google had been focusing its interest on the app, analysing emails to group one which could be interesting together with other features that smartly organises emails. Google has described it as `the inbox which works for you’. Users of the app on their phone are now being redirected to Inbox instead of the normal Gmail.

When a user tends to click through on Gmail, they are greeted by a pop-up informing them that they may want to use Inbox instead. When the user logs in, a message pops up stating `Thanks for trying Inbox. To make it easier, we have updated Gmail to redirect you here’. The tool also provides the choice of heading back to the normal Gmail screen with a large button stating `turn it off’. Moreover it also enables user to turn it off at any point of time in the future through its settings.

Gmail Alive & Well

However, some users have recommended that the change could signal the beginning of the end for Gmail in its present form and the inbox could eventually be the default way of reading emails. Google has stated that Gmail was very much alive and it was simply making it easy to get Inbox as a default. A spokesperson had commented that `Gmail is alive and well and that they want to provide a seamless way for Inbox users to reach the Inbox site from Gmail.com without memorizing a new URL.

The possible redirect makes it easy to access Inbox often, according to the user and it could be turned off with a single click under `settings’. Inbox has been considered to complement the old Gmail view, enabling users to keep their old Gmail address. However the old way of organizing email, like long list of subject lines and senders, ordered by date, seems to be mostly unaltered since Gmail had first introduced it around eleven years back.

Gmail to Warn When Messages Take Unencrypted Routes

Security of User’s Data Vulnerable

Google has observed that the security of its user’s data has become more vulnerable when they received message sent through a different email provider. There is a possibility that most of the users would now begin to see the alerts coming, in a few months.

Google has plans of ramping up security at its free email service by enabling users to be aware when messages arrive through unencrypted connection which could be susceptible to snooping or tampering. These threats have urged Gmail to work on warning system which could alert users when they tend to receive unencrypted mail.

Elie Bursztein and Nicolas Lidzborski of Gmail security team had mentioned in a blog post this week that these warning would begin to roll out in the coming months and while these threats does not seem to affect Gmail to Gmail communication, they could affect messaging between providers.

This statement came with the result of the study indicating that email encryption has been increasing together with measures to prevent spam and fraud by improved authenticating messages. The good news is that more email providers have been offered email encryption along the board with the majority of them utilising a few type of authentication in order to decrease phishing.

Google/Yahoo/Others – Improve Encryption of Websites/Email

But Google has said that it discovered regions of the Internet wherein email encryption had been secretly thwarted as well as exposed malicious servers that were programmed to hijack Gmail message by providing them false routing information.

Bursztein and Lidzborski had indicated in the post that though this kind of attack seems rare, it was a matter of concern as it would enable attackers to censor or alter messages before they are relayed to the email recipient.

In an attempt to enhance privacy in the midst of concerns with regards to hacking and surveillance, Google, Yahoo together with other online firms has been moving to improve encryption of websites and email. Bloggers have confirmed that, to notify users of possible dangers, they have been developing in-product warnings for Gmail users which would display whenever they receive a message through a non-encrypted connection. The good news is that more email providers are providing email encryption on the board and most of them are using some types of authentication to lessen impersonation and phishing.

Most Providers do not Support STARTTLS

Though Gmail-to-Gmail messages are always encrypted, the company has revealed that around 57% of email that are sent from providers to Gmail is encrypted while 81% of outgoing Gmail to the other provider also. This would be great since unencrypted emails are good targets for the criminals.

Moreover the groups also found malicious DNS servers broadcasting false routing information to email servers on the lookout for Gmail. However simultaneously, these researchers also discovered that there were certain areas of the internet which were preventing message encryption by tampering with requests to start SSL connection.

 Most of providers do not support STARTTLS, which means that any email encrypted by the sender cannot be read when it is received on the other end. The focus of Google in warning Gmail users with regards to unencrypted connection is to caution them to such type of dangers.

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Google Will Now Write Email Replies For You

Google’s Smart Reply – Inbox Email Service

Google has recently announced that its Inbox email service would be capable of composing simple replies for its users starting soon. The `Smart Reply’ function would predict which of the emails could be answered with a short reply and thereafter write and present some probable replies for the user to choose from.

So far the most notable example has been Google’s 6 year old project creating cars which can be driven without human being steering the wheel. Software engineer, Balint Miklos had written in a blog post that for instance when Smart Reply had been tested at Google, a common proposition in the workplace was `I love you’ and due to their feedback, Smart Reply is SFW.

Probably because a machine seems to be a co-opting means of communication which earlier needed effort and emotion from the human brain, the update is for Inbox only and not Gmail. If the user has a Gmail account, they could sign up for Inbox, though they may not have to do so.

A spokeswoman for Google had confirmed to HuffPost that it would only work on Inbox’s iOS and Android app though not the desktop version.

Potential to Compose Replies Automatically – Natural Evolution for Service

Three types of options would be offered as reply prior to it being sent across and the response selected would help Google’s computer to learn which one would work best. Google hopes that its new `smart reply’ choice would be particularly famous when people tend to check their emails on smartphone with smaller, touch-screen keyboards.

 This latest feature is available to all consumers who tend to use the free version of Inbox and the more than 2 million businesses that pay for Google’s suite of application developed for work. Inbox which was initially introduced last year was planned to sort through the email and present it to you in a much more convenient way.

For instance it can identify which of the emails are promotions from companies, or reminders for yourself etc. It’s potential to compose replies automatically is a natural evolution for service which has already proficient at processing the messages.

Built on Two Artificial `Neural Networks’

Google has informed that the feature will be made available on the English language version of its Inbox through Gmail app. The replies, though may be simple, a post from Greg Corrado, senior scientist at Google had explained how the software relates to the machine learning tools which Google has been utilising across several of its services in comprehending and forming natural language sentences.

Smart Reply is said to be built on two artificial `neural networks’ a software which tends to mimics the structure of the human brain which Google has trained to comprehend natural language. Instead of having Google engineers to craft rules on how to reply to the emails, the neural network tends to learn by scanning the contents of thousands of emails.

Smart Reply adopts two neural networks where one is to interpret the meaning of an incoming email and the other to form a reply. Corrado wrote that these systems generalise better and handle completely new inputs more gracefully than brittle; rule based system could ever do. He further added that early test of the software had provided sets of responses which seem to be same to each other and so Smart Reply had to be attuned to offer responses with different semantic intents’.

Gmail to Auto-Sync Events to Google Calendar

Google is all set to bring productivity and efficient management of precious time by collaborating its two prominent app in one of kind auto sync crossover. It had brought new feature auto sync the two major apps i.e. Gmail and Google Calendar in order to make personal life, business, travel and event management a breeze. In upcoming days when you receive the Gmail notification for any booking of flight, restaurant, hotel or other event information then its details will be automatically added to the Google Calendar. This crossover will laminate the need of typing or adding those details back in the Calendar as a reminder for later on.

Who will benefit from this crossover? 

People who engage in lot of travel related to work or happen to go on long drives, vacations or just wishes to get better management over these activities will benefit from this new feature. This new feature will get automatically enabled by default for all the people using theses Google Apps regardless of their mobile OS. With this feature Gmail will be able to auto-populate the Google Calendar in a timely fashion with information even related to the delay in the fights, check-in times, flight number and much more. This feature will work efficiently along all the mobile platforms such as Android, iOS and other along with the desktops.

Google has high hopes with this integration

Google is hopeful that this new feature of auto sync will help in providing better ways to the users for saving time and engaging with one another in a productive manner.

Another new feature has been integrated which brings an ability to reuse the old posts. This feature remains enabled by default on both the devices i.e. mobile Calendar and desktop but users can easily turn off or delete the events as per their need. In the educational field this feature can be used to form new announcements by simply tweaking the old posts rather than going through the trouble writing new post from the scratch.

Privacy will be maintained with this new feature

Google had given a huge emphasis upon the privacy and had ensured that the events and plans are broadcasted to the public in any case. The events added in the Calendar from the Gmail will only be made visible to the calendar owner. In the visibility section users can even adjust the visibility criteria along with deleting the unwanted items which might get added to the Calendar.

In order to activate this beneficial program Google Calendar will sent a one-time email notification which will give all the essential details regarding the settings as well the sharing details. Google will be releasing this new feature of auto syncing among the Gmail and Calendar apps by the end of September. This update is expected to bring a new level of productivity among the users and a lot of time will be saved which usually gets wasted in creating events based on the information received via Gmail regarding the work, personal events and tour and programs.

Microsoft's Outlook App for iOS is better than Gmail

Microsoft’s new e-mail app, which is exclusively for iOS was released at the end of January 2015 and it seems that Microsoft’s Outlook app is getting a lot of positive reviews in terms of function and look as this app supports Yahoo-Mail, Gmail, Exchange and more with inbuilt calendar syncs. It is expected that this app will be better alternative of Gmail’s official app on iOS platform.

According to anonymous users Microsoft’s Outlook app deserves hype because after installing and using this app I’ve not felt the need to use Gmail app since then. Yes, it is true that there are scopes for few improvements as Gmail and Inbox by Gmail is better in categorizing mails.

While using this app I felt that sometimes it doesn’t show most relevant contacts and to find any specific contact you might have to scroll a lot. In Microsoft’s Outlook app account setting is pretty easy. If you wish to set up multiple accounts, so you can do same in one app and as per wish you can view each inbox separately or together. This app is good enough to cover all the major e-mail service providers such as; Yahoo, Box, Exchange, Dropbox, Outlook, Exchange, iCloud, OneDrive and Gmail and with this facility you can sync your Gmail and Office mail at the same time in same app.

This app also allows you to set different swiping gestures for every e-mail as you can swipe an email from left to right. If you have subscribe for many different website or getting a lot of emails from different websites, so sometimes it becomes tedious task to hunt for important mails, but with this app you can bundle them into one particular coherent group as per the content of mail. Same as Gmail, which is good enough to categorizes emails into different tabs such as; Promotions, Primary, Updates, Group or Inbox, it has Focus inbox that has emails from your colleagues and as well as personal contacts.

The other tabs are useful to keep the record of emails from Twitter, Facebook, your bank bill, Amazon and your purchases, but the good thing is that it keep Focus tab clean and simple. Apart from basic features, you can set Mark as Read¸ None, Flag, Delete, Schedule, Move, Archive and more. The other interesting feature is that if you have gotten some annoying email, so you will get the freedom to delete it straight from the notification bar.

This new app will help you to make the good use of extensions feature in iOS8 because it let you to share the files and attachment in another supporting app. This app have automatically sync feature with your iOS and Google calendar as well, which make it’s pretty convenient to schedule meeting or events. In emails separate tab showcase all the files and attachment, but the best thing is that it will syncs with Dropbox and Google Drive as well, whereas; on slide menu on left side you can see the Birthday, Holidays in India, Contacts’ and more in the calendar as well and this feature can be pretty important and useful for users in India.

Google Wants Their Inbox to Become the Email System for the Next Decade

The year 2004 saw Google’s signature email program hitting the web for the first time. At that time people considered it as the biggest gift anyone can receive since sending and receiving messages and emails was becoming a daily issue. Nearly 2 years back, Google’s email team designers and engineers formed a team and they were thinking that Gmail was not able to meet all the required expectations. But now emails have started becoming tedious again.

Email is no longer means of just basic communication, it involves complete correspondence, and people are able to receive alerts from different social networking sites, airlines, online shopping stores. It is part of life and performs some of the most important functions on a daily basis. Email not only aids in file sharing, but also helps in storing important documents.

There are people who rely on email for keeping a track of their meeting, calendars’, task planner and even to make it their task manager nearly every day. Apart from performing all these important functions, there are people who might find emails at times very annoying. This is the reason which prompted the Gmail think to rethink about the concept behind email.

According to Gmail's product director, Alex Gawley, they wanted to build something that will be more helpful to people. They wanted to completely rethink about the total concept of emails and build something that will completely change the mind of people and people will rely on things which matters to them all the time.

The team worked on a program currently called as Inbox which the company will be releasing on iOS, Android and the web, but only on invitation-only basis. The Inbox is a long term replacement of Gmail and people shouldn’t be considering it as mere update. Although Gmail will still exist, but the team is looking forward to perform future works on Inbox. User can login to Inbox through the Google account and they will find everything that they had in Gmail. They are expecting people to use Inbox more than Gmail.

The Inbox will replace the Gmail screen with a screen with a similar line of social networking feeds. If a user received photos in the Inbox, they can see the pictures in the main screen and flip through them. The iOS version basically integrates the to-do list and social functionality. Google's data-mining prowess has been used for improving the highlights of this credit Inbox. Users will be able to create reminders and tasks alongside the messages received in the inbox.

The task creation has been made very smartly as it will be able to pull relevant information from the data stored in your phone. On the flip side some of the features are not fully novel. This will require users to use a series of gestures just to navigate and sort out the messages. One might feel this similar to the feature available in DropBox. Inbox can easily categorize your emails in the similar ways like outlook and Gmail. But at the moment apart from the invited people, others will have to wait to get their own app.

Harmful Apps Can Hack Gmail Apps As Proved By US Researchers

According to some US researchers’ study, it is possible to hack into the accounts of Gmail, which can be almost 92% successful. It is mainly done by utilizing a weak point in the memory Smartphones. The researchers themselves were able to have access to a range of apps, which are in Gmail, by masking harmful software as a different downloaded app.Gmail was one of the simplest to access from the trendy apps as it was tested.

What is Phishing? 

Phishing actually is not the single technique used by the researchers to get the user’s information. The Chase Bank app lets the users to pay through checks by getting the image of the check by means of the phone camera. The hackers can do another attack, with the help of the advantage of this characteristic. A particular phone can put down a check by trapping a picture of it. The infected app captured the picture. This can help hackers to have entry to bank account info including the signature of the user.

Impact of the hacking through apps

The hacking was experimented on an Android mobile, but as per the researchers, it might work on any other operating system like Windows as well as the iOS system. The researchers utilized a harmful application to check the activity on an Android Smartphone. The impact starts while the user downloads such a malicious app. This app does not work until the user begins using one of the intended apps of Gmail or even the Chase Bank. By using data in the common memory, the harmful application traces out what the mobile user is doing on another app. The malware after that launches a false login window to get back the data provided by the user into the intended application. This is chiefly called a phishing attack, which the hackers mostly use to get sensitive economic data.

It has been generally assumed by the users and also the developers that these apps can never interfere with one other simply. Researchers proved that this statement is not right, and one app, in fact, considerably is able to affect another and this causes some harmful effects for the user. The hackers can get access by making a user to fix a seemingly risk-free app for example phone wallpaper. They expose a lately revealed public side channel, which does not need privileges. This trait allows methods to share all the data capably and is rather common, because all of the downloaded apps of the mobile interact with single operating system.

Thus, all the users must be always careful about these hackings. They should download apps from only the reliable sources. Generally, in most cases, popular apps are the source of hacking. In order to avoid these, it is better to check your Smartphone or the tablet on the regular basis. You have to be certain that apps that are the genuine one are the just ones that you installed. If any unnecessary app or the seemingly harmful apps are downloaded, uninstall it immediately.

Gmail Android – One Billion Downloads

Latest India TV reports, that Gmail, the reigning Web based email service has recently added another feather in its cap by adding the first ever app in the Android market which has reached one billion download milestone. Google’s Gmail app has now become the first standalone smartphone app which has passed the one billion installations on Android devices.

The apps download tally counts the overall number of unique accounts, with the exception of total number of downloads and devices using the app and according to Android Police, the number probably includes some abandoned as well as duplicate accounts. Earlier around 2012, Gmail had around 425 million active monthly users, which has now increased with the entry of the Android and according to AppBrain site; Gmail had reached the halfway billion mark way back in June 2013.

Gmail – Celebrating 2 Year Anniversary 

With the mounting demand of Gmail app together with other Google Play apps have attributed to the demands of Android in which most of the tools are installed through default on Android 2.2 and above, on every certified Android operating device. The mobile platform has been efficient in achieving this target.


Gmail, it is said will be celebrating its 2 year anniversary as one of the most widely used email service by next month which just shows how big Google’s role has been in contributing to the mobile industry. The app was installed on all Google Android devices as a part of Google’s licensing covering most of the Android software powered smartphones, tablets and other devices that are available everywhere with the exception of China and is updated automatically when connected to the Google Play store.

Outfit 7’s Range of Talking Friends/Angry Birds 

The milestone was crossed somewhere last week as announced by Google’s head of Android, Sundar Pichai and the Google Play store ranks the apps by downloads done in different ranges and Gmail Android app ticked over to the one to five billion bracket.Severalgroups of apps namely Outfit 7’s range of Talking Friends apps, though have already passed the one billion downloads milestone, not a single individual app has been downloaded one billion times on its own before this.

 The Angry Birds collections of games however had broken the one billion downloads in the year 2012. Gmail’s one billion downloads strengthens data on how many Google powered Android devices are sold, with Google’s executive stating that more than a billion Android device activation had been passed last year.

Google+/YouTube/Chrome/Maps

This implies how important Google’s agreements are to have their apps installed by default in fuelling download as well as encouraging users of its services. Manufacturers do not have access to Google‘s Play Store without installation of the Google’s suite of apps and putting them in a prominent position.

 Some of the other Google apps are Google+, Chrome, YouTube and Maps though they all remain under the one billion app install barrier and Chrome has been listed as being installed less than 500,000 as per the Play Store. Gmail has been part of the defaultinstallation ever since Google introduced Android in the year 2009.

How to Send or Enable Auto Reply in Gmail

We will not be sure that all the time you will avail internet connection and still you are required to inform someone who is very important that you are not able to reply, in such situation you can set your email to be auto replied to your contacts while they are trying to contact you via email.

The time limits can be set as per your wish. Once the person wants to contact you again and again, the reminder will inform the corresponding person that still you are away. Just follow the steps which are stated in this article, surely it will help you to assign a auto replying facility of your email.

Steps for making auto reply

First, log in to the Gmail account. In the Gmail page, you will be seeing a gear like icon right top of the screen. Click that one and it will show you a drop down menu. In that menu you be seeing the setting option. Hit on settings.

It will show you the settings page. In “General” tab you will see the Vacation responder section while you are scrolling down the page. While you are checking that you will find the subject and message option in the “vacation responder”

Just fill the subject and the message based on your engagements in the vacations you will be also allowed to set the date and the time in which you will not be available. In this date setting you can set the date of you first and last day of your vacation.

Here you are choosing to whom you want to auto reply with the vacation response. If you are not required to send the auto reply mail for whomever mailing you. You should check the option which occurs below the message box. Then it will be sending the auto reply for the persons who are present in your contact list. Additionally if you are using the Google App, you may avail another option which helps to restrict the auto reply to the people who are using your domain.

1. Incase if you are using your signature in your mail, then automatically your signature will also sent along the vacation response. Once everything is completed save the changes you made.

2. If you need to make any changes in the vocation auto reply message, just get in to the Vacation settings.

 Note: whatever the messages that are in spam or sent to you using a list will not get your auto reply.

Once you are enabling the vacation responder, in the top of the Gmail you will find a banner. That banner will display you the subject of your vacation response message. Once your vacation got over and you want to quit this auto replying service, you can do it by clicking the “End now” that present in the banner.

How to Schedule or Send Email in Future in Gmail

Sending Email is becoming a trend in the internet, and also nowadays everyone used to send various informations through the email only. But in some cases, we would have forgotten to send the emails to various peoples and in some important cases; we would send the emails in wrong dates to the recipients. In some cases, we would have forgotten to send emails to our beloved ones for their birthday and forget to send emails in many cases. Suppose, even if you were forgetting emails, but the receiver gets it on the exact day, how would you feel for that. In some cases, you can even schedule the emails according to the dates and send them on the exact dates. In this article, I have discussed about the Boomerang for Gmail, from which you can easily send various scheduled emails to your friends and also for other professional activities.

What is Boomerang?

Boomerang is an addon or a plugin which is suitable for the browser such as Mozilla firefox and also for the Google Chrome. The Boomerang allows you to take over the complete control of your email account, especially Gmail account. When you were sending emails to the recipients and also when you were getting emails from the others, the Boomerang will monitor the activities of the Email account.

How to Use Boomerang in your Gmail Account?

Boomerang is an addon for you browser and you can download it from the Browser Extension center. Once you have downloaded the Plugin in to your browser and activate it in your browser. That’s all, you can send emails and receive emails as similar to your previous email account. But if you use the Boomerang services, you can use your email account with more control.

Steps to Enable Boomerang in your Email account:

As I have discussed earlier, Boomerang is an addon which can be easily installed in your browser. But there are few steps which can be followed inorder to enable Boomerang in your account.

1. Open your browser, it must be Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox browser, then Visit the Boomerang Website. 

2. Click on the Install Button in the website; once you clicked the Install button, the Boomerang will starts to install in the Browser.

3. Just click the instructions which are appearing over the screen and click next on your Screen until you complete the Installation Process. 

4. Once you have completed installing the Boomerang, the Boomerang will automatically starts to work in the Browser, which makes you to use your Gmail for Ultra-Easy way. 

5. Once it has been installed properly, just send the emails as you do in the Original Gmail account, and then click the send button. It will as you an option which shows that Send Now or Send Later.

6. By clicking the send later button, you can easily set your time for the email to be sent from your Gmail account.

How to Know if Your Gmail Account has been Hacked

Security and privacy are one of the main thing which has been rolling in everyone’s mind if they want to do any sort of things; especially various online queries has made them to think about the privacy of their personal data. In this post, I have shared an interesting bit of information about the way to know whether your Gmail account has been hacked or not. In order to know that, no need to install any additional features in the Gmail account. Thankfully, Gmail account has many in-built features that assist you to find whether your account has been accessed by other persons or by any suspicious login attempts. By verifying the following information, you can find whether the account has been hacked or not.

1. Last Account Activity: Last Account Activity gives you the last activity of your Gmail account. By accessing the Last Account Activity, you can easily found out whether your account has been accessed by the others or not. Last Account Activity gives you the list of IP addresses along with the time in which your account has been accessed. So that you can easily found out the login details of your account.

2. Go for your Login Sessions: Login Sessions provides you various levels of activities of your Gmail account. You can find the Link to the Login session which is present next to the Last Account activity and named as Details. The Details tab shows you various activities of your Gmail sessions and it displays a page which shows you information about the recent activities of your mail account. It gives you various detailed information about the Browser type from which the account has been accessed and also where the IP addresses are from.

3. IP addresses from various countries: Don’t get afraid if you’re noticing any IP addresses from various countries. Suppose if you’re seeing any sort of third party tools which are accessing your Gmail account, then they will mostly show in the activity log. This helps you to trace those IP address and you can easily start your own investigations. There are lots of tools which are available in the Cyberspace from which you can trace the IP address information very easily.

4. Unwanted Login activities and Suspicious-activity monitoring by Google: Suppose if your account has been accessed by any suspicious login; Google will automatically provide you information regarding those sessions. You will be getting alerted if any one accessed your account from unknown locations.

5. Log out from all Sessions: Make sure you have been signed out your session when you’re using any public computers. If you’re not sure that you haven’t signed out your account, you can easily sign out the various sessions by using SIGN OUT ALL OTHER SESSIONS option found in your Account activity area. This will help you to resolve any careless mistakes that have been made by you.

If your account has been hacked, then immediately change your password for better security and privacy.

How to Send personalized Mail using Mail Merge in Gmail

Are you going to celebrate birthday party at hotel and need to invite all your colleague and friends through email?

Wish to send mail in a personalized way to recipients, at this scenario Mail merge can be handy. To know start up with Mail merge, no installation of new software required, it is just in build feature of Microsoft outlook and Word. If you aren’t using Office, that is not going to be a great deal. You can perform mail merge using Gmail and Gmail Docs in your browser.

Mail Merge with Gmail – Procedures

• Login in to your Gmail and compose a new mail. Don’t wonder that it is like the same, some exceptions occur while marking the text that varies from other messages. If Dear First –Name is going to e your text, then you have to convey Gmail that First name is variable field.

• This is not going to be a great deal, you just need to replace First-name in the message by $%First-Name%. As you performed now replace the remaining variable field in body or else replace in subject line of your Gmail.

• Now finishing all these steps save the mail in draft message in Gmail. Now make a copy of this draft message to spreadsheet in your Google Docs account. Your expected magic happens here.

• Open up with Mail Merge HD, spreadsheet you copied just appears. You’ll find some dummy data t get started with it. You have to do some editing works like replacing column names so that the replacement variable field matches with Gmail draft message.

• You can also either add or remove number of column as per the requirement, but at default one mandatory column must be present. Important note that must be kept in mind is that column name in spread sheet and variable field name in Gmail draft message are same, so Gmail variable is mapped to column in Google Docs.

• As you created column likewise create a row to specify personalized recipient to whom you need to send.
 
On filling up with necessary data, you are prepared to send. Go to Mail Merge menu in Google Docs and click on to hit Mail Merge. Since this is the first time you are sending, it may conform for access you may grant to your Gmail to your won Google account. Hence on doing this you will have more secured nature to your data and no one will access to your data.

Start Mail Merge in Google Docs 

On gaining access Google Docs clack on Star Mail Merge, which shows Gmail template that you created before. Now enter Sender’s name, if Bcc option required tick and hit Start Mail Merge. It all over and your mail are sent in a secured way.

Make a note that Gmail offers this to a certain limit. Only a maximum of 100 messages in a day are allowed, exceeding this may lead to locking of your account by Google temporarily. If this methods seems to be little confusing use a simpler version of Gmail Mail Merge.

How to Auto Forward Gmail in Bulk

Have you ever managed email address that forwards incoming mail to other email address. This scenario may exist in office, college and lots more place where you need to share a information in common. Gmail offer you this facility to Auto- Forward your incoming messages to other email address. Initially you have to filter and any message that matches filter will automatically forward to another email address that you have specified.

However there is some restriction involved in Gmail’s Auto Forwarding Facility: 

• You are not allowed to auto-forward old emails. For illustration, you have a cluster of emails and need to forward those to your Evernote account for archiving. You’ll have to manually forward those one by one. This is so because auto forward works only with new incoming emails. So you cannot try it out with older once.

• You are also restricted to auto-forward email other than the filtered once or unverified email address. When you opt for auto-forward facility it initially sends an verification to all the emails you have specified and upon acceptance it will send. You cannot expect to send email to unspecified address.

Gmail’s Auto-forward with Google Docs

Initially we have discusses came to a conclusion that Gmail will forward only to the new email and older emails are hard to perform so. Gmail along with Google Docs provides you services of auto-forwarding in bulk with old emails. Google Docs implements a simple Google Script to overcome this situation.

The method is very simple. Initially you have to set up Google Script that will monitor one or more label in your Gmail in Inbox and when it finds email of this type it will automatically forwards to the specified recipients. You just have to set the script once and it will automatically send it form the next time automatically.

How to set up Email Forwarding in Gmail

• Initially make a copy of Google Sheet in your Google Docs. You will find two columns A and B, fill them with appropriate data. You have to enter a valid Gmail names in A and in B corresponding auto-forward email message to designed email address. This will decide to forward the message. If the enter email Id is not valid then problem going to arise.

• In order to process of message forwarding you have to go in Gmail Forward menu and in Googel Sheet choose the initialize and allowance the script access to your Gmail account.

• Final process has come up and Go to Gmail Forward start genuine launch of Auto-Forward script. Now on closing the Google Docs you may find that it automatically forwards your Gmail message to the particular you have specified.

You may have slight confusion regarding forwarded message was completely processed or not. For that a new label called Forwarded will be indicated to Gmail threat. It describes that the message has been auto forwarded. When you find that this is not necessary you move to Google Sheet and uninstall from the Gmail forward menu.

Gmail loads images automatically from To day!

Google has reactivated the automatic loading of images in its e -mail service Gmail. But to prevent that the sender know too much about the user by tracking pixels Google's own proxy server plays in between. In e- mail marketing tracking pixels are often used, which are recharged by the E- mail client to determine if an email was opened, and find out more about the receiver.

Because the tracking pixel is loaded, the e -mail client sends an IP address to the sender, which can thus roughly determine the whereabouts. Using personalized URLs can thus also determine whether a particular e- mail address is being actively used, for example, to send there more spam. And in webmail clients can sometimes examine other information using referrer.

To prevent this, many e -mail clients only load images when the user explicitly requests it, and save the settings for each sender. Google has taken some time ago to Gmail this way, but now opted for a different solution. Immediately Gmail invites in an e -mail may contain images back automatically. But in order to protect the privacy of users while Google proxy server switches between, on which the images are cached.

 This prevents that referrer data arrive at the sender. In addition, Google can filter the files as malware and block images if it have any malicious code. However it can be with a personalized URL continue to determine whether an email has been opened and there is the actual e -mail account because Google will load the images only when the user opens the respective e-mail.

Gmail provides the ability to disable automatic loading of images and restore the old behavior. For desktop users, the automatic loading of images from today should be enabled for mobile users from the beginning of 2014.

Google Introduced Gmail Backup Data

From next month, Gmail users can download a copy of the contents of their e-mail for backup or export to another service.

This feature is already available for Google Calendar and it is now available for Gmail also. This feature was announced by Google yesterday and it will be soon be possible to download a copy of the email in its entirety or by selecting the data.

The export will be to MBOX format, which will be able to transfer a backup to another mailbox. Copying is done via Google Takeout (under "download data" in the Google account) through which you can retrieve the data from several other services such as YouTube, Drive, Google+ or Hangouts.

 It is also possible to create a single archive with all services. Google says that this backup option will be introduced from the next month to Gmail, but what is immediately available to the Calendar service.