Protect Gmail messages with confidential mode | Hacker News Reader

Protect Gmail messages with confidential mode

support.google.com

15 pointsgschier7 comments

Edit: Removed my original write-up to double-check something, lost the write-up, retyped a tl;dr version.

This is aimed at Enterprise, not individuals looking for a Signal-like messaging platform.

"Confidential" e-mail implementations already exist in many places. Plenty of messages need to be e-mailed but the contents can't be inlined due to compliance. eg, medical systems send e-mail updates that are just a plain message but the e-mail is just a link to an auth portal and behind that is the actual message. Not great user experience.

But here, is G-Mail already has Google-grade auth and the same auth as Google Vault, so the document can be stored in Vault and in the e-mail the link and payload itself can be automatically swapped when sending or receiving. Smother user experience. eg, vertical product integration.

This is clearly targeted at Enterprise (G Suite, plus half the questions are about compliance). By default, Apps users are able to use this feature, although it can be disabled at the domain level by admins. It is not the actual sending of e-mails in this manner that's the default.

Put another way: If you don't see the point of the feature, you aren't the target audience. It's not trying to be Signal.

I just don't smell anything nefarious here.

Disclaimer: Am Googler, but unrelated to the project. Just heard about it now and have enough experience in this area that the feature's context seemed clear to me.

You cannot be a employee of Google and "100% unrelated to this project". I understand you're not involved with it directly but you've obviously bought into the company, their mission and their methods.

As far as tinfoil hats (thanks for the assumption that anyone skeptical of Google's intentions is a crackpot) if this was not a net gain for them and merely a feature for enterprise compliance, why are they turning it on fit all Google apps clients by default? Under your charitable scenario they could offer it to those who need it without impacting us crazies.

That's close enough, in big company dynamics being in an unrelated arm can be farther away than some members of the public. Feels like a nit.

I didn't imply every skeptic was donning tinfoil, but I saw a couple claims here and elsewhere in that range.

The default setting is to allow e-mails to be sent confidentially, not to actually send them confidentially. Seems like a typical default. Here's a new feature, by default you're allowed to use it unless domain admins want to disable it.

I think you misunderstand what default means in this context.

The admin console setting for "people in my org" is on by default. Individual emails aren't confidential by default.

(I also work at Google, and technically on Gmail, although not on the product).

What a shit show:

"When someone sends a confidential mode message, Gmail removes the message body and any attachments from the recipient's copy of the message. These are replaced with a link to the content. Gmail clients make the linked content appear as if it's part of the message. Third-party mail clients display a link in place of the content."

So it's neither confidential (google can read it), nor an email (as it's just an email containing a link to some google site).

Is this the beginning of the end of SMTP?

One thing the document doesn't address (unless I missed it) is whether a confidential message can be fetched using IMAP.

I don't understand how this protects GMail emails, or how it provides any sort of confidentiality.

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