Google offers a lot of useful application via the web like GMail, Calendar, iGoogle, Talk, Notebook and more. But there's a downside to using these applications and that is that in their normal usage, all of the information transmitted between you are your computer is unencrypted making it relatively easy for anyone to read your traffic. As some of these applications may contain personal information, and information that could lead to identity theft, this is a serious problem. There is an easy solution, but you need to make sure you take precautions to ensure the privacy of your data.

Even though most of the Google web services make use of unencrypted connections, they also support encrypted connections, you just need to make sure you are using them. You can take two steps to ensure this.

1) When you go to the "home" page for a given google web application, navigate to the address bar and edit the URL so that instead of reading http:// it reads https:// at the beginning of the URL. Once you make this change in the address bar, press the Enter key so that the page reloads. You are now make use of a secure encrypted connection. When you use a connection in this manner, the links within the application (such as clicking to read an email in Gmail, or to compose a message in Gmail) will be using secure encrypted connections.

2) Once you make this change, bookmark the secure version of the page and only go to that service through the bookmark. Don't click on links that will take you to Gmail or iGoogle or calendar, because they will take you to the unsecure version of the page. Always make sure that you go to the service using your bookmarks.

It may sound paranoid, but it really requires little effort to use the Google services in a secure manner and it can save you a lot of trouble in the long run.