In a Tuesday night blog post, Google said that it is releasing an important security upgrade worldwide for the users of the Gmail - whereby the internet search biggie will turn on the HTTPS - Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure - as the default setting for the Gmail users.

Saying that the security upgrade move essentially follows recent revelations that attackers are repeatedly attempting to inappropriately access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, Google added that the turning on of the HTTPS for Gmail continuously by default would help protect user e-mails.

With HTTPS being a popular Internet practice, bringing together the standard HTTP Web protocol and a layer of encryption based on the SSL/TLS protocol, security and privacy experts had urged Google to secure e-mails with the automatic deployment of the technology.

Though HTTPS slightly hits the e-mail delivery speed, Google has argued that the benefits of the use of the technology, for encrypting all traffic carried on its free Web-based Gmail service, far outweigh the 'marginally slower speed' consequence.

Noting that Google is "currently rolling out default HTTPS for all Gmail users," Sam Schillace, the Gmail Engineering Director, said on the official Gmail blog: "Over the last few months, we've been researching the security/latency tradeoff and decided that turning HTTPS [HTTP Secure] on for everyone was the right thing to do."