iGoogle has won and earned its position at the healm of my browser experience by becoming my homepage. It's a useful location that can host many widgets that I'd want to check first thing: my Gmail account, my RSS feeds in Google Reader, a To Do list, the weather, and some news headlines. All-in-all it's very useful, but this morning I woke up to it becoming a little less useful. Apparently, the Gmail gadget will no longer access a Gmail account secured with the 'always use https' setting that I discussed and recommended way back in August, 2008, Gmail Helps with your Security Concerns, pt. 2.

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iGoogle Stops Supporting Secure Gmail?

April 29, 2009 Media, Security, Tech Solutions 182 Comments

iGoogle has won and earned its position at the healm of my browser experience by becoming my homepage. It’s a useful location that can host many widgets that I’d want to check first thing: my Gmail account, my RSS feeds in Google Reader, a To Do list, the weather, and some news headlines. All-in-all it’s very useful, but this morning I woke up to it becoming a little less useful. Apparently, the Gmail gadget will no longer access a Gmail account secured with the ‘always use https’ setting that I discussed and recommended way back in August, 2008, Gmail Helps with your Security Concerns, pt. 2.

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The Learn more link takes you to this Gmail help page.

I configured this setting when I wrote the original article on it back in August 2008 and haven’t touched it since, but have used the Gmail gadget on iGoogle every day since then. This leads me to two thoughts:

  1. Gmail just now started using the ‘always use https’ setting to secure Gmail always, including connecting through iGoogle.
  2. iGoogle just now stopped supporting the https protocol with Gmail.

Essentially it’s coming down to a choice; they are making us choose convenience versus security. If that’s the case, I have to go with security and you should too. Unfortunately, this significantly decreases the usefulness of iGoogle and I may just have to replace my homepage to a series of tabs opening Gmail, Google Reader, and the others. I already didn’t like the improvements they made to iGoogle with the “maximizing” gadgets, but I got around my preference by just having a few handy bookmarks instead.

I haven’t seen anything about this update to iGoogle anywhere so I’m hoping this article will break the silence. Is there any information out there about what changed and why? I’ve confirmed that this is not a browser issue by checking Firefox and IE. It was working before I went to bed last night.

Update:

Thanks to mjdonline for bringing this to my attention. Google’s response (scroll about half way down and look for an answer from Paul):

Hi everyone,

As several of you have noticed, we made a change in iGoogle to the way that iGoogle’s Gmail gadget works. If you previously set Gmail to only access your mail using https by selecting “Always use https” in Gmail’s settings, you will now see a message in iGoogle’s Gmail gadget asking you to open the full version of Gmail. We made this change in iGoogle for those users who want to ensure that their Gmail is transmitted using https.

We know that many of you would like to access your mail from iGoogle with https, and we’re investigating ways to provide https support for iGoogle’s Gmail gadget. In the meantime, you have a couple of choices:

- If you’d prefer to access your mail with https, please visit Gmail directly at https://mail.google.com/mail.
- If you’d rather get your Gmail on iGoogle with the Gmail gadget, visit Gmail’s Settings page and select “Don’t always use https.”

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.


Related posts:

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  2. Solutions For iGoogle Causing Stack Overflow at Line 0 Error
  3. Google Aims To Promote Gmail With Its New Email Intervention Program
  • Jake

    Glad someone is finally talking about this! This is ridiculous. Google, you frakked up. Own it. Restore access from iGoogle. It renders the page essentially useless thanks to Google Reader.

  • http://steamcommunity.com/id/m-p-3 m-p{3}

    I use the Google Mail preview on my home page, and this is indeed annoying. I’m pretty sure they made this settings to make sure that your mail preview is not being sniffed over the network (to keep some security consistency among Gmail and iGoogle). If they could provide an https version of iGoogle, I’m sure they could allow it back without causing a security flaw.

  • Ross

    I’ve suddenly hit this too, I bet google had missed this and has closed a security hole, it’s a real nuisance :(

  • Adrian

    I really have how they changed that. This is worse then when they changed the tabs. (at least that could be worked around by going to http://www.google.ie/ig ) But this is broken across the board. Please fix this google.

  • http://blog.theg2.net Greg Bray

    I hope this gets fixed soon too. A temp fix is to use a gadget based on the mobile client:

    Gmail: http://www.google.com/ig/directory?type=gadgets&url=hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/100080069921643878012/gmail.xml

    Gmail for domains: http://www.google.com/ig/directory?url=hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/114137030403598684048/GoogleAppsServices.xml

    I also hope they would release a version of the official Gmail client for Gmail for domains so that I could have both listed on the iGoogle home page and the mobile homepage.

  • http://www.texupport.net/ Ralph

    Are you certain that the gadget had been observing your https preference? I suspect that, until today, the gadget was mistakenly allowing unsecure access to your mailbox regardless of your https preference.

  • http://www.404techsupport.com 404 Tech Support

    You might also check out NetVibes as an alternative to iGoogle. It currently works to connect to Gmail.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/404techsupport 404techsupport

    Ralph,

    That's thought #1 in the post. You can use SSL for iGoogle by going to https://www.google.com/ig. But that still does not allow the Gmail gadget to work.

    I agree with you and suspect that SSL was ignored somewhere down the line, most likely internally between Google servers.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/404techsupport 404techsupport

    Adrian, that's a cool trick. You might also check out this firefox extension to get rid of the iGoogle sidebar.

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/93…

    It's "experimental", so you'll have to sign in or check that box.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/404techsupport 404techsupport

    Adrian, that's a cool trick. You might also check out this firefox extension to get rid of the iGoogle sidebar.

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/93…

    It's "experimental", so you'll have to sign in or check that box.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/wsmith84 wsmith84

    Chiming in that this new break absolutely sucks.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/404techsupport 404techsupport

    Yep. As far as I can find, Google's remained silent on the problem.

  • mjdonline
  • Dino Brown

    I have only ever used the Do not use only https… setting. Yet, am hounded each time I am prompted to confirm my password to go directly to g-mail or change my setting. When I go to settings nothing has changed, https is not activated. It has totally put me off Google as my home page, as useful as it is. But, what are the alternatives if you rely on the widgets for a quick glance at the day. I’m looking and if I find one, I’m gone.

    • http://www.404techsupport.com/ Jason

      I highly recommend using the ‘Use https’ setting. It’s more secure and with Gmail being recently targeted, it might mean your account is spared.

      If you’re having to confirm your password a lot for Gmail, it might mean that your account has had suspicious use recently. I would recommend changing your password to be a very secure password and changing your security question.

      If you’re looking for an alternative to iGoogle, try out NetVibes.

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