Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail

While you’re setting up Gmail to check emails from other accounts, you’ll see an option to Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail. We recommend that you keep this checked. For some accounts, you may need to uncheck this option if you get an error.

If the email account you’re fetching mail from supports Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption, you can select this option to have all information sent through a secured connection.

If you select this option, and your email provider doesn't support SSL, Gmail will let you know that your configuration failed. Clicking Show error details will likely reveal a Protocol error in this case. You'll need to uncheck this selection before continuing.

What are the SSL requirements?

Gmail uses “strict” SSL security. This means that we’ll always enforce that your other provider’s remote server has a valid SSL certificate. This offers a higher level of security to better protect your information.

What do I need to do if I see an error message?

We suggest contacting the other email provider’s customer support with the error details to help them fix their SSL setup. If the error is not fixed, we will disable your mail fetching and stop retrieving your messages from your other account. Alternatively, you can disable using SSL in Gmail by unchecking ‘Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail’on the Accounts tab in your Mail settings. However, this means that your password and email will not be protected while sent over the Internet, so we don’t recommend disabling this.

What are the SSL certificate authority requirements?

We do not accept self-signed certificates. For a certificate to be valid it needs to chain up to a valid CA, like one in the Mozilla CA list.