Gmail gains new machine learning models to block phishing and spam messages

Google has just pushed a major security update to Gmail, which is supposed to block phishing, one of the most common ways to obtain sensitive information like passwords, credit card details or usernames.

The new security update includes early phishing detection using machine learning, click-time warning for malicious links, as well as unintended external reply warnings.

According to Google, thanks to the machine learning integration, Gmail can block phishing messages and spam with an accuracy of more than 99.9%, which is quite impressive.

As mentioned earlier, Gmail is now displaying unintended external reply warnings to users, which is meant to help prevent data loss. For example, whenever you try to respond to someone outside of your company domain, Gmail will warn you to make sure that you intend to send that email.

On top of that, Gmail will know if the recipient is an existing contact or someone you interact with on a regular basis due to its contextual intelligence features, so you will not get these warnings all the time.

Most of these new security features are meant to protect companies data and help employees avoid scams and phishing attempts. It's nice though that Google continues to add built-in defenses against new security threats more often than not.