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Comment by pferde | Hacker News Reader

"Finally, a new confidential mode allows you to remove the option to forward, copy, download or print messages—useful for when you have to send sensitive information via email like a tax return or your social security number. You can also make a message expire after a set period of time to help you stay in control of your information."

No, thanks. I like my e-mail archive under my own control.

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I find this a rather dangerous precedent. At best, it's an incompatible extension over what would be standard email and it further expands Google's walled garden, and at worst it sets up a false expectation of security, ending up as little as snake oil and possibly setting up people to dangerous situations. Nothing hints at messages being PGP encrypted (Or being encrypted, period. "Recipient verification" just looks to me like a way to get an acknowledgment of receipt) or even how Google disposes of "expired" messages.

How would this work outside google's garde?

Lame feature. Take screenshot. File / forward to circumvent.

"Features" like these are actually worse than useless because they give users a false sense of security.

I don't understand the hate. It's still a good way to send a password or some financial information, just because you know that it's going to be deleted soon and if in the future your contact's account is hacked it will be long gone. Basically, it's a secret chat for email.

>This message will get deleted in 2 years.

>Password is piedpiper123

"Oh, better I copy the password to my computer if I ever need it."

This is just a tool, some people may find it useful, others probably won't even use it.

Well, i wonder how they will make other mail providers (or clients, for that matter) to honour this kind of mail headers.

My take on the criticism here is that people are ignoring that Google has a lot of customers on GMail and a lot of corporations on GSuite. Intra-office email management is another ballgame and these kinds of features are pretty common in that space (Novell had them in the 90s even).

For users outside of Googles platform the obvious solution is either not to send them or to send a managed link to the message contents via normal email.

It can't be perfect thanks to the analogue hole, but it only has to be a bit better than nothing to provide utility.

Just like services like Virtru: they would just get a link for that content.

Exactly. It is almost a mis-feature for bringing fake sense of security to their users, since receivers actually can very well take a screenshot or even a photograph.

What they could do is put the contents in a video* and have the media be DRM'd. You couldn't take a screenshot, only a picture with your phone.

*Or image, not really sure if that works.

Can you actually DRM a video so that the OS won't let it be screenshotted? I usually use the snipping tool for Windows screenshots, does DRM stop that working somehow?

I don’t think it will on Linux, I could have sworn I’ve watched Netflix with just the EFI framebuffer. If that worked then there’s no way any sort of DRM that can be viewed on Linux would stop this.

Try Netflix with Microsoft Edge and try to take a screenshot. Only subtitles will be visible.

Abuse of proprietary power at it's finest.

Even if you can, it's possible to circumvent that (see: analogue loophole).

As long as people have cellphones with cameras anything sent to them has to be considered 'open'.

At the same time, sending internal payroll information and such is something that can, and does, get accidentally forwarded.

This feature is less about "perfect security" and more about making sure the dumb-dumbs who work in other departments don't shoot themselves in the foot.

Awesome feature. Fire people who are blatantly mishandling confidential material.

I think it is to prevent accidental data leaks. A lot of information is accidentally leaked by people forwarding email chains without checking what is in them.

It sounds like another way to get people to visit google sites. Presumably if you email someone who isn't on gmail they will get a link they have to open in a browser, and unless you enable invasive javascript, you will not be able to view the message.

Anyone know how this works with IMAP? Does it just not show up in IMAP, otherwise forwarding etc. is trivial (ignoring the fact that you could just screenshot the message and send the screenshot)

I'm not sure that even will be available to non-Gmail users natively, probably you'll just see a link to check the message.

It can't be available as a message, only as a link, otherwise it wouldn't work. But in this case it shouldn't even be called an "e-mail", it only confuses people.

Yep, I think thats it. I don't remember where I saw the screenshot, but for anyone not viewing through a Gmail app or site, you get a web link to click on to view the message.

> Anyone know how this works with IMAP?

The email contains a link to a site controlled by Google which holds the actual "email's" content.

Forwarding the email will only forward a link to an access-controlled resource.

Finally, email meets DRM!

Not to mention everyone who uses email may now need to have a Google-account to read email, even if they don't use Google mail services themselves.

I wonder if they had any discussions about this internally, and if anyone on the engineering team objected to such changes. I find it hard to believe such a change was done by pure accident without anyone noticing.

Discussions about it internally?

They're pushing GSuite for governments, corporations, schools... Things like 'read receipts', email recalls, and such are common questions and common scenarios that are supported by their competition. I bet this is in a well curated list of requests from schools, healthcare organisations, and MegaCorps alike...

For people outside the Google sphere there are numerous alternatives to make this appealing. A single-use link, for example, or just slapping OAuth on there. The baseline is open email, so any kind of trace-ability is a huge improvement.

It's not new: https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/encrypt-for-ou...

I'd expect they will just send you link to view message in browser. So you will not be able to view message normally unless you use Gmail and that is probably goal of this feature.

Since I automatically forward my Gmail to another (main, non-gmail) address, this means I may not receive those mails.

Gmail will send you a link, so you can at least tell the person off and have them communicate with you like a real human being.

Don't use it then?

Others might send you shit in that way.

Then you reply and tell them that the feature doesn't work and send it to you in the standard way.

Standards need to be enforced.

> send it to you in the standard way

What standard is that exactly?

In this case, RFC822, aka. "E-Mail", which does not mention self-destructing electronic messages.

People will probably just write rules to bounce these.

To me, it violates the principle of email. It's a static thing that cannot be edited, excepted deleted by the recipient.

This new "remotely deletable" thing must be essentially a link to a Google controlled page in the form of an email.

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