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Comment by ktpsns | Hacker News Reader

> removing options for recipients to forward, copy, print, and download

Oh please... Everybody can do a screenshot nowadays, and even Google itself integrated OCR into its Screenshot tool at Android a few years ago. What a waste of time to make the life of people harder who must use this "security" feature!

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> Note: Although confidential mode helps prevent the recipients from accidentally sharing your email, it doesn't prevent recipients from taking screenshots or photos of your messages or attachments. Recipients who have malicious programs on their computer may still be able to copy or download your messages or attachments.

it's not a security feature. it's to help prevent users shooting themselves in the foot.

Can you explain how "removing options for recipients to forward, copy, print, and download" could "help prevent users shooting themselves in the foot"?

Not sure why you’re being downvoted. To me it seems only to increase the chance for users to shoot themselves in the foot, as they now have a false sense of security.

I agree, I can definitely see people thinking "oh, this has the option to forward, it must be safe to share".

I get a bunch of information through emails at work that Im not allowed to share outside the company, and tons of others that I need to send to people outside the company. If the people sending me the internal company emails mark them as such, I can be sure I never inadvertently forward the wrong emails to the wrong group.

I think the threat model is about catching your own mistakes, not preventing bad actors from acting.

it seems it would be more useful to implement things such as "delete message after X days" or "do not forward" instead of mock features like this. Adding an autodelete feature in gmail is overly complex, requires filters + google scripts.

Did you read the actual article? They added that as well.

Right but from the sender's side only. I wish there was an easy way to automate deleting of old messages e.g. auto-deleting my unread messages or most of the newsletter/promotional stuff.

This feature only works for users of Gmail and specifically web mail. All the users I would want to have an extra layer around 'shoot themselves in the foot' usually also insist on using Outlook to access their email.

This is simply a superficial UI that gives a false sense of doing anything for most of the cases.

The most important security feature is just the fact that email won’t be saved in that account. I had cases when I had to send or receive a small piece of sensitive data (SSN, bank account details) and we used Virtru for that. Now we can just send in Gmail.

The first thing that springs to mind is attorney client privileged emails. My understanding from how legal explained it to me is that if I have a privileged email conversation with them but then forward it to my boss that communication wouldn't be privileged (and I just shot myself in the foot legally)

Yes, this system does not seem to prevent the information from spreading.

I guess that the logic is that most people who know how to make a screenshot also know how to make a fake screenshot.

So, let's say that Mr A is not a very honest guy. Moreover, Mr A has a sensitive document that could be a liability in court. He wants to share it with Mr B. But, he does not completely trust Mr B. With this system, he can share it. If Mr B sends a screenshot to the police or a judge, it will be easier for Mr A to claim that the screenshot is fake.

That's just a guess... I hope that it was not the intent of the dev, though.

Even easier, right? Can’t B press F12 and change the content easily? One mail is not enough evidence.

A would be better off using something like Snapchat for the confidentiality.

This is a feature Outlook has had for years. Users understand it. It's only pedantic geeks who don't seem to understand the use cases.

The Airbnb app prevents screenshots on certain pages on the OS level on Android, I'm sure the Gmail app will do the same.

> The Airbnb app prevents screenshots on certain pages on the OS level on Android

it is creepily dystopian that this sort of behavior is even possible

I think you're overreacting there and misappropriating that term to express your outrage, without thinking of realistic use cases. It's a security feature. Bank apps and 2FA apps probably have it as well when displaying sensitive information. In Airbnb it's probably a protective measure to avoid sharing information via screenshots instead of links to the app / website though. That's not dystopian either though.

It's not a "security" feature, anything which can be displayed can be captured, you can even take a picture of your phone with another phone if you want, it just makes users annoyed without adding any security.

Just because you can get around a policy doesn't make it ineffective. I'm sure that slight barrier reduced the number of people taking screenshots of their bank app 99%. Perfect is the enemy of good.

It just gets user annoyed for no reason, why can't they take a screenshot of their bank account anyway? It just makes no sense. I understand banks like it because they are full of regulatory security which don't make sense in real life, that's probably one more to add to the list.

How about app makers stop infantilizing us? I'm an adult, responsible for my actions and the consequences thereof. I keep records of actions I take on my bank's website, so I have to work around them disabling right-clicks.

I give them the benefit of Hanlon's razor as far as their reasoning is concerned, but it's not something to excuse.

> It's a security feature. Bank apps and 2FA apps probably have it as well

And I would be creeped out as well by a bank website disabling the ability to take screenshots!

The computer is mine to command. I simply do not find acceptable that a user program can disable basic functionality.

Sadly, I think the era of general-purpose computing may be drawing to a close. Too many people are happy to settle for terminal appliances rather than real computers.

Ticketmaster also does that. It's incredibly shitty that they disable functionality on your phone.

The problem is that the operating system gives this power to the app developers and not to you. The shit is on the side of the android developers, not on the app developers, which are simply using an API available to them.

Netflix does the same. If I owned my device I suppose I'd be the one to make decision about when I can screenshot and can't.

It's stuff like this that's hyping me for projects like the Librem 5[1]. Sure, I might lose out on some functionality, but at least I can use my device as I please, and I and the community can make alternatives without those restrictions. I don't think it'll "catch on", but I sure hope that it becomes relevant enough to make some of these app developers consider supporting it.

[1] https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

Worthless from a security standpoint, because the screenshots can still be taken from a desktop or laptop device.

You can always steal something if it can be seen. I think it's more of to clearly express that they don't want you to screenshot whatever it is. You can subvert it but you know you're doing something you shouldn't.

I don't use AirBnB so I can't actually think why you'd want to disable screenshots in certain places. I'm curious now though, can someone tell me?

I would assume two reasons: 1) Don't let people easily scrape their content and list it on a competitor. 2) Make it hard to people to put up fake listings that look real with the intention of scamming users.

https://gawker.com/the-best-times-reporters-were-accidentall...

Or just take a photo of the screen with their iPhone!

The day this comes out I hope there will be a browser extension that automatically strips the retarded DRM by copying the html from the "viewer" website and replies to the original sender with the contents, so that a "cracked" copy of the email is saved in both the sender's and recipient's history as it should have been in the first place.

Netflix moved their high-definition DRM to end devices by now. The only way to rip their shows is by getting the output from HDMI.

You also need to defeat HDCP for HD content, which is possible but not as easy as a simple HDMI capture.

You just need HDMI splitter that doesn't use HDCP on output.

Right. And that means getting a cheap Chinese splitter that may or may not strip HDCP, buying one on the grey market, or making one yourself.

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