• Gmail helps protect against viruses, spyware, and other malware. In addition to scanning and filtering incoming messages for spam and other dangerous items, Gmail blocks the transmission of executable files as attachments because these may contain malware that other scanners could miss. It also prevents automatic loading of third-party images that could include hidden malware or trackers used by spammers and phishers. Learn more.
• Gmail is the first major webmail provider to offer default HTTPS access. This means that messages are encrypted during their transmission from your web browser1 to Google’s servers, which helps protect your data from being snooped by third parties if you’re using an unsecured Internet connection. Learn more.
• Gmail offers 2-step verification as an optional extra layer of security for your Google Account. Using 2-step verification involves entering a code obtained on your phone—as well as your username and password—when you sign in. Even if someone steals or guesses your password, that person still can't sign in to your account because they don't have access to your phone. Learn more.
• Gmail alerts you to suspicious activity in your account. If Gmail detects something unusual is going on with your account, we’ll alert you by posting a warning along with the geographic region that we associate with the questionable access. Gmail also gives you control to sign out all sessions of your account from any location. Learn more.
• The Gmail Security Checklist can help ensure your security settings are as strong as possible. This simple guide walks you through the process to check your computer, browser, Google Account, and Gmail Settings.

No, but automatic scanning and filtering technology is at the heart of Gmail. Gmail scans and processes all messages using fully automated systems in order to do useful and innovative stuff like filter spam, detect viruses and malware, show relevant ads, and develop and deliver new features across your Google experience. Priority Inbox, spell checking, forwarding, auto-responding, automatic saving and sorting, and converting URLs to clickable links are just a few of the many features that use this kind of automatic processing.

No. Google does not share your email address, your messages, or any other personal information with advertisers.

No, how you use Gmail is your own business. Personalization features like Priority inbox, Smart Labels and custom filters enable you to tailor Gmail to your needs. The way you use Gmail’s customizations and the way you handle your mail (e.g. whether you mark messages from someone as “unimportant” or set a filter to archive them) are not visible to other users.

By default, Gmail stores chat transcripts in your account so that you can easily search across them. If you don’t want your chat conversations to be stored in your account, you can choose to chat “off the record.” You and your chat partner can see when a chat is taken off the record and you’ll be instantly notified if your friend decides to chat on the record again.

Yes. We make it easy, quick, and free for you to move your email and contacts to another provider. The Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products. You can learn how to export data from Gmail at http://www.dataliberation.org/google/gmail.

Like other technology and communications companies, we receive requests from government agencies around the world to provide information about users of our services and products. Like any law-abiding company, Google sometimes may be legally required to share information with law enforcement. However, before sharing any information we first scrutinize a request to make sure that it complies with both the spirit and the letter of the law—and we may refuse to produce information or try to narrow the request. When possible and legally permissible, we notify the user in order to give him or her the opportunity to object.

We’ve created an interactive map of Government Requests that shows the number of law enforcement inquiries for information about users and requests for Google to take down or censor content. We hope this step toward greater transparency will help in ongoing discussions about the appropriate scope and authority of government requests.