Gmail has defaulted to an encrypted connection for over four years years now, including redirecting if you attempt to access over http (yes, even in Firefox). Really the only way that setting could have been made is if you made it at some point. Everyone else was opted in to https access.
"We are currently rolling out default https for everyone. If you've previously set your own https preference from Gmail Settings, nothing will change for your account. If you trust the security of your network and don't want default https turned on for performance reasons, you can turn it off at any time by choosing "Don't always use https" from the Settings menu."
And seriously, you accessed your email for years over an http connection and never even searched to find out why that was happening?
You clearly did not understand what I said. I wrote that I used chrome, which I assume has a pin for google sites because even when you allow HTTP in your Gmail account, you would be taken to the HTTPS site.
Then, when going to firefox, It would take me to gmail over http. This is because my account was set to http (by default) and chrome doesn't allow connections to gmail over anything but https.
I accessed gmail one time over http in firefox (when I was connected to burp) before I realized there was a problem. My account had been set to "Allow Connection of HTTP" for years, but chrome will only connect with https.
Despite what they say was default, a few of my friends and I experienced a bug where ours was set to "Allow HTTPS" but we didn't realize it since we were using chrome.
"We are currently rolling out default https for everyone. If you've previously set your own https preference from Gmail Settings, nothing will change for your account. If you trust the security of your network and don't want default https turned on for performance reasons, you can turn it off at any time by choosing "Don't always use https" from the Settings menu."
And seriously, you accessed your email for years over an http connection and never even searched to find out why that was happening?
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/default-https-access-f...