hello, firefox won't show the padlock icon, when it's a so called "mixed connection". when a email message is embedding external images, those might not be loaded over a secure https:-connection. even if there is one single element of the page that is not loaded through a secure connection, then firefox won't show the padlock icon in the location bar (your connection to the gmail servers itself will stay encrypted nevertheless).

Philipp Thanks thsi hepls. Any idea why once the Icon is gone it does NOT return until I do a refreash?

i certainly can replicate the issue as you're describing it, however i'm not entirely sure why the icon isn't turning back to a padlock when you close a mail with insecure content for example.

i can only speculate, that the status of a connection is only determined during the loading of a page & whenever a secure connection is getting "contaminated" with mixed content. since gmail isn't really reloading the page when you close a message and go into your inbox, but is using javascript/ajax to replace the content instead, this might be the reason why the indicator isn't switching back to the padlock.

one way you could use to minimize the issue is to go into the gmail general settings and make sure that External content: Ask before displaying external content is selected.

Just a final observation. The lose of the Lock Icon seems to be occuring on IE as well as Firefox. Once a "mixed" content is accessed the only way the Icon returns is to do arefresh.