The majority of the emails sent to Gmail users is spam, according to Google. The search giant claims that about 50-70% of all emails is spam but that it is able to block 99.9% of all spam mails. This means the email service rejects hundreds of millions emails every day.
Google has developed a new method to protect users against spam mails with malicious attachments. In a blog the company explains that it now, "correlate[s] spam signals with attachment and sender heuristics, to predict messages containing new and unseen malware variants."
Messages that are potentially dangerous are also additionally analyzed which could cause a delay of about 4 minutes. During those minutes Google's Safe Browsing technology will scan the mails. About 0.05% of all emails would require the extra analyzing, according to Google.
"These protections enable Gmail to better protect our users from zero-day threats, ransomware and polymorphic malware," according to Sri Somanchi, Product Manager of Gmail. "In addition, we block use of file types that carry a high potential for security risks including executable and javascript files," he added.
The technology is rolled out right now and it can up to 3 days before all Gmail users make use of it.
