Google Privacy Update: Strangers Might Now Reach You on Gmail

If you use Gmail, Google's email service, chances are you also have a Google+ account -- whether or not you know how or attempt to use it, that's a different story.

Regardless, the combination of the two in an update by Google could send some emails from people you might not know your way.

If you enable this feature on Google, a Google+ user reaching out to your Gmail would look like this. (Image source: Google)

Here's how Google described the update in its blog post:

Have you ever started typing an email to someone only to realize halfway through the draft that you haven't actually exchanged email addresses? If you are nodding your head 'yes' and already have a Google+ profile, then you’re in luck, because now it's easier for people using Gmail and Google+ to connect over email. As an extension of some earlier improvements that keep Gmail contacts automatically up to date using Google+, Gmail will suggest your Google+ connections as recipients when you are composing a new email.

The company does allow Google+ users to control just who can use the email finding feature.

If a Gmail user didn't want Google+ contacts to be able to email them directly, they would need to select the "no one" option. (Image source: Google)

Google's relatively recent update to is inbox filing system (the system that separates your emails into "primary," "social" and "promotions" tabs now) comes into play with the Google+ email contact rollout as well.

"When someone in your circles emails you, the email will appear in the Primary category. But if you don't have them in your circles, it will be filtered into the Social category (if enabled) and they'll only be able start another conversation with you if you respond or add them to your circles," Google Product Manager David Nachum wrote in the blog post.

Nachum wrote that this new feature will roll out in the next couple days and users will be alerted about it in a message to their Gmail account.

(H/T: Huffington Post)

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Featured image via AHMAD FAIZAL YAHYA/Shutterstock.

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